Delayed Intensification - Continued

Lilly has started the second half of Delayed Intensification. This will be the last intense part of treatment before she reaches Long Term Maintenance. Hallelujah! Once in Maintenance, she will still get spinal taps and chemo and take lots and lots of medicine, but it should be less "intense" and not as often and we are so excited about that! Lilly started DI last Friday with a spinal tap to get Methotrexate chemo into her spine, as well as two other chemos through her port - Cytoxin and ARAC. Lilly stayed accessed for 4 days and continued to receive more ARAC at home from our home health nurse. ARAC makes her feel really yucky. It's one of our least favorite chemos to get. But, we do what we have to so Miss Lilly can get better. We have another spinal tap and 4 days of chemo scheduled for this Friday. 

Whenever Lilly gets accessed or deaccessed, this is what the needle looks like that goes into her port in her chest. Lilly's is a 22 guage 3/4" power port. To say this was scary the first 10 times she got accessed is an understatement. But, she's pretty good at it now. When Lilly is accessed with this needle in her chest, she is able to receive chemo/fluids/meds/blood and it also lets them take blood. It's an amazing little device, but we do have a love/hate relationship with it as I'm sure all cancer kiddos do...

Whenever Lilly is feeling good, we take advantage of it and get out of the house. Lilly often times feels "stuck" and that she can't do anything or go anywhere. Especially now that cold and flu season have started, we have to be extra careful not to get Lilly sick. On Sunday afternoon we went for a drive up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Silver Lake. Brrrrr! It was cold! We were only out of the car for 10-15 minutes before we hopped back in and continued on our adventure.

Lilly was excited to wear her wig. It kept her head nice and warm!

We headed up Guardsman Pass, and by the time we got to the summit, the clouds had rolled in and it started hailing nickel sized hail! 

But then the clouds parted and it was a gorgeous day once again. 

We ended up in Midway and it was such a beautiful drive. Sad to say, all the vibrant red leaves had already fallen off the trees, but the yellow quaking aspens were gorgeous. I love Fall. I'm glad Lilly was feeling well enough to go for a Sunday drive and enjoy all that God has created for us.