First hospital visit after end of treatment

17 days after our last chemo day, we've had our first monthly hospital visit and blood test (and of course the IVIG that we are still scheduled to have for the next 3 months). It was a looooooong day. Arrived at the hospital at 1:20pm for Bianca's blood test, then waited at the Ronald McDonald room for her appointment with her doctor at 2:20pm. Doctor ran probably around 10 - 15 minutes late, but no complaints. And he was thoroughly pleased with Bianca's blood results. In fact he was actually quite surprised how quick her lymphocytes recovered. On the 13th of September they were 0.23 and today they are sitting at 4.4 (it can sometimes take up to 6 months to recover properly) and this means (drum roll please...) - no more daily acyclovir tablets and no more weekly co-trimoxazole. That means that apart from the monthly IVIG (for the next 3 months) Bianca is effectively done with medicines.

Bianca's platelets are 210 (up from 93), haemoglobin 135 (up from 93) and neutrophils 2.82 (up from 0.76). The doctor mentioned that he doesn't think Bianca will ever become neutropenic again (what an unreal thought).

Of course all this does not mean Bianca suddenly doesn't have any risks against things like chicken pox and measles and so on. It is only once she reaches 6 months off treatment that we can be sure that she recovered completely from being on chemo, it is only then that we will do the blood test to see which of Bianca's immunisations she'll need to get again (I'm praying and hoping that we won't have to repeat them all).

And then it was time to be accessed and then we waited, and we waited and finally the IVIG arrived from the blood bank around 16:45 and we managed to leave at 18:45. It is going to feel so weird when in a few months from now we won't have the IVIG anymore and our visit will be much quicker.

So right now as you can gather, Bianca is doing great. She does have a rash on parts of her arms, legs, tummy, but the doctor feels confident this is likely just as a result of stopping chemo and as long as it doesn't start itching we won't be putting anything on it.