Cycle 5 Begins!

I cannot believe it, but Cycle 5 of 7 began yesterday. Dave is on vacation this week, so he brought Catherine in for her lumbar puncture with intrathecal methotrexate (he is brave enough to remain in the room during the procedure - I did it once and will never do it again), vincristine, and we are on a 5 day pulse of the lovely steroids (she cried for about 10 minutes in her closet for no reason this morning - gotta love those steroids!)
I have wanted to update sooner and actually started writing something a couple of weeks ago, but the post really depressed me and I didn't want to bring others down. Suffice it to say that this battle does not get any easier with time. Catherine felt like shit today and she threw up 3 times on the car ride home yesterday. All par for the course, and my head knows that it is all normal, but my heart breaks every single time. I know part of my malaise has to do with the fact that several kids whose stories I follow are now facing a certain death (one of them is a little girl from Argentina whose blog address I posted here once before). On top of that, subconsciously, I think I have always worried about hitting the 18 month mark in her treatment as the kids I know who relapsed on treatment seemed to do so 18 months in. Let's just say that I hate cancer and what it has done to my family. Yesterday, Catherine pointed out a bruise worried that her platelets were low (how many 5 year olds, let alone 85 year olds, know what the hell a platelet does?) Then today, Alex told Dave and I that when he gets a blood infection (Catherine speak for leukemia) he wants a pony. I just didn't even know what to say to that one and he is not even 3 yet.
So enough of all that. In happier news, the new house is coming along. Still a lot of echoes, but hopefully that will come to an end soon with arrival of some more furniture. We did discover that we had a bit of a mouse problem in the unfinished part of the basement, but we nipped that one in the bud and hopefully we won't have any visitors this Fall. Catherine and Alex love the house. It's funny, we live in the same town, albeit 3.5 miles away from the old house, and we live closer to I-95, yet I feel like our backyard and the whole block is a nature preserve. We do live near a nature preserve which probably explains the wild turkeys on our block, the bunny Catherine has named Cindy that we see everyday in our front yard, deer in our backyard (we do serious tick checks at night), loads of butterflies and more chipmunks than we ever had at Devon Road. Catherine asked me if we bought this house because of all the animals. The kids LOVE it!
Next week, Catherine starts kindergarten. I am absolutely nauseous at the thought of her being in real school, but she is so excited. We got the bus schedule today and she has to be at the end of our block (which is 0.37 mile from the house) by 7:57 am!!! I don't know how I am going to pull that one off. We haven't found out who her teacher is yet - apparently they send that out at the last possible moment to avoid too many complaints from the parents. I did get Alex's class list for his pre-school which begins the week after Labor Day. He will have the same teachers Catherine had when she was 3, which I requested, and we know 4 of the kids in his class as they are the younger siblings of kids Catherine was in class with. All in all, it should be a good year and I think we have reached that point in the Summer when you can't wait for the change of season.
Almost forgot, Catherine lost her first tooth this week. She was so excited and immediately put the tooth under her pillow. The tooth fairy left her a lovely note congratulating her on the special event along with $5. The tooth fairy told her to spend or save the money. Needless to say, we hit the toy store that day and Catherine got herself some Hello Kitty make-up.

With that, I will try to update after school starts. And just a quick link to Lauren's website regarding the Light the Night Walk for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society -http://www.active.com/donate/ltnMelvil/2076_LaurenTermini . If you haven't already done so, please support her and this very worthy cause.