One Year Off Treatment

Today marks the one year anniversary of Catherine going Off Treatment. What a year it has been. In some ways, I feel like I am a normal mother again...I am not driving an hour each way once a week to a doctor for blood work, I am not rushing to shove dinner into my kids by 5 pm so that I can give my daughter chemo on an empty stomach before she goes to bed, and I am not going to a hospital when my child has a fever. And now that we have hit the one year mark, my first call when Catherine has a fever can be to my pediatrician, not an oncologist! Unfortunately, I know that I will never be a totally normal mother. I am sure that when the children of one of my friend's gets a fever, headache, or just everyday fatigue, they don't get a pit in their stomach wondering if it's cancer. Sadly, I have a feeling that will always be my initial reaction - even with Alex, and for a cancer Mom, I know this is normal.
What I have found even more amazing over this past year is the change in Catherine. First and foremost, she looks different. She doesn't have that moon face that is so typical in kids going through leukemia treatment thanks to those dreadful steroids. She actually looks like the older version of her 3 year old self. Her class pictures from when she was 4 and 5 look like a totally different kid than the one running around in my house today. She has grown a lot too. During treatment, her growth slowed dramatically and she went from being an average height girl to a below average one. Since finishing treatment, she has grown at least 1 cm each month and she is no longer the shortest kid in her grade. She also has the energy of her peers, which for me is the greatest thing to see. I always tell people that before Catherine got sick, she could run circles around other kids. We were always outside going for long walks, going to the playground, you name it. The moment she was diagnosed, she did a 1-80. I think that was one of the hardest things to watch. And she knew it because you could see her frustration. There were actually times she would cry about not being able to do what her friends could do in gym class. Now she is doing karate and softball and loving both. She runs around at the playground, "hikes", and she can jump for hours on my neighbor's trampoline. Slowly, but surely, the old Catherine is re-emerging.
The "experts" say that the rate of relapse drops dramatically after the one year off treatment mark. You have no idea how good it feels to have made it to this milestone. That said, I am not ready to let my guard down. I don't think I ever will. Reaching this milestone also means that we only head up to Guilford every other month! At her next well-visit, Catherine will now start her vaccinations where she left off. Given that she was last vaccinated at the age of 2, we are essentially starting over and will spend many days this summer getting caught up. Finally, when I fill out all her school forms, I won't have to fill out an extra form, as required by the State, on why she is not vaccinated.
With all that good comes the other side of things...I will now have to make appointments with Yale's Heroes Clinic to have follow-up tests on the after effects of the chemo on her heart and bones. And, she will remain on a 504 Plan at school so that her teachers can keep an eye out for potential learning disabilities which are more common in female cancer survivors and tend to show up about 3 years or so after treatment. Such is our life, but to have to deal with the after effects of chemo on your child, means that you child is still alive and that is really all I could ask for.
So with that, I have decided to make this the last post on our blog. Dave and I started this journal of sorts to keep people up to date on all that was happening to Catherine in those crazy first months, but as time passed, and our lives fell into a routine, it became a way of documenting Catherine's treatment for Catherine. I would like to think that all this will be a blur to her one day, or as the ER nurse said on the night she was diagnosed, "a blip on the radar screen of her life". Maybe one day she can look back on all this and see just how amazing she was at such a young age and how the most horrible experience in the world made our family stronger, wiser, and so thankful for everyday we are together.