Since Thursday night, Ben has been in the hospital with a high fever. He has been on antibiotics for three days. We are hoping he will be coming home soon. There is still his birthday cake in the fridge of which he only had one piece. Ben has a central line with a hidden “port” under his skin on the right side of his chest. The tube, which is under his skin, is directly connected to his aorta. Through this line, chemo is administered. If chemo were given through a smaller vei

HAPPY 9th BIRTHDAY, BENJAMIN !! (May 20th, 1999) Today, Ben is at home celebrating his 9th birthday. He went to school for one hour to see his classmates. He is very tired and has trouble sleeping but he is in good spirits; of course; it’s his birthday!! He wants to go to a restaurant for supper and wants to play with his Indiana Jones lego set. It should be a fun day despite him being very tired and experiencing back pain. Tomorrow he goes to the hospital for another bone ma

Ben, on his bike, near our home. For the last two weeks, Ben has been taking Dexamethasone (an artificial steroid know to kill leukemic cells) to bring him back into remission (no leukemia). The side effects of this steroid are that he gets very moody and very hungry. Ben has gained 2.5Kg (5 lbs) in two weeks and and continues to eat all day. He is getting a one week break as his breathing and sleeping are suffering because of the weight. This break will hinder getting him in

Ben, at Children’s Hospital, creating one of his many novels. Last week’s tests pointed out there there was 1% leukemia in Ben’s body. After more detailed tests over the weekend, it was found that he has 3.5% leukemia. This Tuesday we found out that Ben has had a second relapse of leukemia. It's not a full blown relapse but an early one. Since he relapsed during chemo, it means that chemo is no longer eKective to get rid of the cancer. Therefore, we are now trying to get him

Yesterday I went in to the clinic with Ben to receive his chemo of Vincristine. His platelet and white blood cell counts have been steadily dropping. This is what happened when he relapsed in August of 2006. We are hoping and praying that this is just due to the chemo from last week. If it is a second relapse, it has happened during chemo treatment which is not a good sign and tells us that the leukemia is resistant to the chemo. If this is the case everything will be put on

Ben had another 3L bag of chemo drugs go through his body within 24 hours. He also had the same chemo drug injected into his spinal fluid. All part of the continuing treatment he receives every 2 weeks or so. Of course, he always has a winning attitude and appreciates everything the nurses and doctors are doing for him. A bone marrow transplant is his best option for a cure, but there is no match in the world registry. A sibling would be the best chance but his sister, Stepha

Bonjour everyone. Well, the chemo has been delayed for the last 3 weeks due to fevers and flues. Ben had a fever of 40ºC and we had to take him to emergency. He had to be admitted for 4 days with rounds of antibiotics. While he was in the hospital with his mom Pam, his sister Stephanie was at home with dad. She had the stomach flu and was vomiting. When Ben and mom returned, mom had the stomach flu and was throwing up as well. Then Ben got it too. Dad was immune, for now, but

Ben at Mount Seymour having fun tobogganing. Ben has been continuing his chemo for 5 years, 3 months. He has tolerated most of it well but again shows signs of his body weakening. Every time he is in the hospital (every 2 weeks on average) for chemo, he gets either a high fever, stomach pains, feels noxious, catches a cold, has a rash, has low blood pressure or any combination of all these reactions. We are looking down the road when he is due to stop his chemo treatments in

Ben has continued his treatments since the last update and seems to be responding well. He has been getting fevers and had a cold and stomach flu for the last 3 weeks but in general, seems to be tolerating the chemo. The dosage of the dreaded ARA-C, that gave him a bad reaction a while back, has been increased to one half from one quarter the normal dose. Tomorrow he goes into the hospital for three quarters of the normal dose to see how he will tolerate that. We have noticed

Tonight, we all walked 5km to help the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society raise money for research to And a cure for blood cancers. THANK YOU to all family and friends who donated to help me raise money. In the end, I raised $820 for the Light the Night Walk. Tonight, we walked for Ben, in memory of my mother (who passed away in ’98 from Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma), in memory of my father (who passed away last May from Colon cancer) and for Doug Galloway, who is a survivor and has beat

We managed again to have a week of no chemo and his blood counts high enough to go on a mini trip to Cannon Beach in Oregon. Ben spend most of his time jumping over the cold waves of the PaciBc. He enjoyed being outside in the sun and creating games in the sand and in the ocean. It was a nice holiday with excellent weather. It is usually very foggy but the 6 days we spent there, the days and night were great. We could see the milky way and many stars. One day when I get a dec

It’s been a while. Since Papi had passed away, it’s been difficult to get “back to normal” again. Yesterday was Papi’s birthday. He would have been 68. We were able to rearrange a few chemo sessions to give Ben (and the family) a break. We went away to Disneyland for a much needed vacation. We spent 8 days at Disneyland. The weather was perfect and everything worked out as far as everyone’s health. We stayed at the Grand Californian, which is a great hotel right on the Disney

On Sunday, May 20th, 2007, Ben had his 8th birthday! We spent the day at his grand-father’s with his wife Mieko. It was a great time and Ben loved his presents and yummy cake from Ganache! Ben loves his grandfather and Mieko very much. Sadly, “Papi”, passed away yesterday after his long battle with cancer. They spent lots of time together as they shared stories of having to go through chemo and sharing how tired they were from all the medicine. We will all miss Papi very, ver

Benjamin has been continuing his chemo at the hospital and at home. He attends school in grade 2 where all subjects are taught in French and he is in the top 3 in his class. Even when he is not feeling well, he wants to go to school. Having been mostly with adults, he loves being with kids his own age. Everyday, Ben takes different medicine at home besides all his chemo every two weeks at the hospital. In this picture he is showing 4 different syringes with 4 diDerent chemo d

After a very stressful and difficult week last week, we are in a “recovery” mode. This week, Ben had to get fitted with splints which he must wear during the night. One of the drugs he has been taking since October 2002 called Vincristine, after prolonged “use”, tightens tendons and muscles especially in his legs and feet. Both his Achilles tendons have tightened over the years despite daily exercises to stretch them. This causes him more pain to walk with his heel down. Ther

As I’ve said before, never a dull moment. On Monday of this week Ben came into the clinic to receive another round of treatment. This is the time where he needs to spend the night to have the chemo drugs administered over a 2 day period. One of the drugs has some adverse effects on the heart while the other can cause a fever which will disappear after 2 days. This is the second time he has received this combo. The doxorubicin was given first in the form of a push (syringe ins

We’ve had a scheduled hospital stay of 4 days 2 weeks ago and Ben reacted very well to the treatment. He did not show too many signs of nausea and his spirits were up despite the nurses waking him up to take a urine sample every two hours each night. It wasn’t fun for me either since I slept on a lumpy cot and also woke up every two hours. At least they didn’t ask me for a urine sample. During that 4 days he received a 5 litre bag of methotrexate, a yellow liquid chemo drug.

Ben has been doing well in this maintenance phase of his treatment. He has been going to school almost everyday and has shown a little more energy during the day. Besides his having no hair, which is actually slowly coming back as predicted, he seems like a regular 7 year old boy. He comes home and does his homework (having both parents as teachers, he can’t get escape that), reads, draws, plays and practices his piano. The differences with everyone else is that every 2 weeks

On December 22nd, 2006, Ben went in for chemo. He received two diAerent chemo drugs through IV. It was to be a overnight stay. He vomited around 2:30am and had a fever. He stayed the next day as they did tests to check where the fever was coming from. One of the chemo drugs does cause a fever but he had not reacted to it in the past. The fever turned out to be from the chemo though he has had a nasty cough for a few days and still does. Ben returned from the hospital on Frida

Monday, December 11th, Ben had some blood drawn to check his counts. They had gone down a little but he was still OK to go to school. Even though they were expected to go down this week, he has shown little sign of fatigue or catching a cold or fever. We went out to see Charlotte’s Web on Saturday. He continues to write and illustrate his stories that he has done since he was 4 years old. His “publishing company” is called Sunny Side Up Books. He has continued to play piano a