School & hospital

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 he needs to go into the hospital for treatments and chemo. The stays range from just 45 minutes to others that take 4 to 5 days. This will continue until January 2009! Every 2 weeks until 2009... It’s hard to believe that anyone would have to do chemo for that long and so often especially a child. It must take its toll on his body, not to mention the 4 years of chemo he has already endured. Over half his life has been spent having chemo.

His next treatment is on January 24th where he will have to stay 4 days and receive 5L of a chemo drug in the space of 24 hours. This will bring his blood counts down so low that he needs another drug to bring them back up. The rest of the time he will spend in the hospital resting, hydrating and having blood taken everyday to monitor his counts.

We went walking in the forest in the snow and he enjoys going outside and exploring. He gets tired very quickly but always wants to continue.

He is getting another loose tooth which is getting him nervous. When he started chemo in August, he was told that the loose teeth had to be pulled. This is because when his counts are low, which is most of the time, his body does not have enough defenses to Ught oE bacteria and viruses. Because these bugs can hide under his loose teeth, it’s better they be pulled before they have a chance to cause

complications. So Ben is asking often if he’ll have to have

it pulled. It will at one point. But because he’s been through so much he always shows his brave side.