Maintenance Begins!!

On Friday, we finally started Long Term Maintenance - 7 months and 6 days after her diagnosis (but whose counting?) Maintenance will encompass a once/month dose of Vincristine; a 5 day steroid pulse once/month; 6-MP every night at home; once/week dose of methotrexate at home; and a lumbar puncture with methotrexate once every 3 months. This past Friday, she got it all. The 'roid rage kicked in pretty quickly. She put it on hold for her friend's birthday party, but Grandma and Pop-Pop sure got a dose of it when they babysat Saturday (Dave and I went out to dinner for our anniversary). Sunday was spent crying in pain the entire day. As I've written, Vincristine always seems to give Catherine jaw pain, the severity is hit or miss. This dose was a big hit. We actually gave her codeine on Sunday, but it didn't work. On Monday, Catherine insisted on going to school. She complained about her jaw so I gave her the codeine and it seemed to work by the time I dropped her off. Unfortunately when I picked her up, her teacher informed me that she didn't feel well and cried half the time. At home, I gave her another dose of codeine. It seemed to work somewhat, but not enough. I called the doctor's office and Dr. Joe said to give her codeine every 4 hours and if the pain is still there in the morning to bring her in for an IV drip of morphine. I certainly hope it does not come to that. I also hope that Maintenance eventually becomes the "breeze" everyone tells me it will be. I think we were all spoiled by having the old Catherine with us for the past 6 weeks. Now chemo Catherine is back. It absolutely breaks my heart to have her cry to me and ask me to make the pain go away and there is absolutely nothing I can do but hold her.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.