Getting Rollin': Background and the Plan

Hello Friends and Family,

I'll get a little background going here and then a few details of the new diagnosis with a general plan for treatment. 

I was feeling great, with no symptoms. I was working this summer as a plant restorationist after finishing my first year of graduate school in Environmental Horticulture (for me which translates to plant restoration in natural areas). Briana and I got engaged at the end of July! A major life-highlight! And then we headed down to Lake Tahoe for vacay with the Lovells and then came back for a 3-night backpacking trip with the Buchners in the Cascades. A week later, I found out that a surveillance scan showed that my leukemia was back some how.  I did not expect this news.

Every few months for the last 1.5 years, my oncologist injects chemo into my spinal chord to treat any leukemia cells that might have hid out and were missed during the first treatment.  They also take out some fluid to scan for bad cells. Unfortunately, the routine scan in August returned leukemia tumor cells. This type of relapse is called a Central Nervous System relapse and what it means is that I have to treat the CNS and the bone marrow for the next round.  It's not that much different then what I already went through, except with less bone marrow chemo and more CNS chemo. I'm sticking to the pediatric plan as well, so the treatment will be more gnarly than the adult treatment. 

The goal of treatment is a quick remission. I should be getting a new port that goes into my spinal chord which allows better injects into the spinal fluid. I also won't have the hospital stay for the first month.  Treatment regimen is a little shorter (about 5 months) and it has many of the same chemos I took before, for better ( I know I can tolerate them) and for worse (some of them still suck bigtime and can have serious side-effects). Almost all of the treatment will happen again at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA). I'm now awaiting surgery to get the new port and then the treatment plan will begin. 

I'm staying in the Capitol Hill apartment with Briana. Dad had to change around his semester plan and is applying for family and medical leave to be a primary care giver for me. Mom will stay in Illinois for this semester--she was able to take medical leave to be my primary-care giver during my first treatment. My brother Jonathan lives 15 minutes away and is another key component to the support team. We've been learning golf together, which has been great.  Then I have many great friends--old, new, school, family-friends--that are wonderful people who live in Seattle and will keep me preoccupied.

Briana has been so amazing and strong through this whole process and is just the most wonderful person. Her family has been so supportive and generous too, I am so grateful for them! Her sis, Myra got some permits two weekends ago to Mt. Rainier for backpacking. We didn't want to sit around and stew around the house all weekend, so we decided the best move was to get out and get another backpacking trip with her and Mike, her S.O.  I'll post a pic from that trip below, cause we had great weather and good times by the Mountain. 

TOP: Trail Selfie
BOTTOM: Mike, Myra, Briana, and I at Mt. Rainier