According to the chemo protocol given to us, Sey is scheduled to be administered with Vincristine on Tuesday and Triple Intrathecal (TIT) on Wednesday, both can be done as an outpatient. Prior to this, she already had her blood tested in the hospital near us.

This Tuesday, December 04, 2018 Onco was satisfied with the result of the blood test so he decided to proceed with TIT on Wednesday. To make sure that she is well rested, doctor decided that Sey should stay in the hospital overnight. This is also the last set for the Induction phase (4 weeks), before proceeding to the next phase which is the Intensification phase (6-9 months). Before the next phase, Onco wants to see how well the body reacted to the first phase of chemotherapy by performing another bone marrow aspiration (BMA); since this and TIT requires anesthesia, he wants to do it on the same day to save resources.

However, Sey had a mild fever and mild cough that lasted until Wednesday so the Onco decided to defer the procedures and have her checked for infection; as this is very dangerous because in TIT and BMA, a needle might go through infected blood first before reaching the spinal fluid. Blood testing and x-ray were also done. December 05, 2018 she was given basic antibiotic through IV and paracetamol (oral).

Today is Thursday December 06, 2018, her temperature is back to normal and mild cough is gone. Onco is still waiting for the results of other test to make sure that she has no infection and she will remain stable. Procedures will proceed on Saturday if everything is okay, which means we are looking at 5-6 days of confinement with multiple procedures. Financially, we cannot help but worry about the bill as the smallest bill we had for a 5 days confinement is 100k+, with procedures and chemo. And this is just the 1st month out of 30-36 months of medication. Psychologically, we are battling with negative emotions as one of the obvious side effects of chemo is happening rapidly, alopecia. We already know this is going to happen that is why we had her hair cut short but still we cannot help but flinch every time a bunch of hair is easily pulled off. The chemo targets rapidly dividing cells, but it does not only target the bad cells it also affects all rapidly dividing cell types like hair, nail, the mouth, digestive tract and bone marrow.

Good thing our Sey is in high spirit, she laughs when she is happy ( as long as there are no strangers around) and surprisingly her appetite is getting better (as long as she likes the food).

Friends, I am not good in language both written and oral, and it did not bother me before as I am a programmer who communicates using machine language. But now I wish I have the words to properly express our gratitude for all the support.

Our battle has just begun yet our resources are almost depleted. Your financial help no matter how small will greatly help us win this battle. Again, thank you for extending your love to our Seysey.