My Diary
 
 
 
I saw Sylvester Stallone being interviewed recently. During the interview he said that he wouldn’t be making any more Rocky films, as after making six films in the series, he had ‘nobody else left to fight’. Well, if he ever considers making one more Rocky film I know one opponent who would definitely wipe the floor with him - you guessed it, our Jacob! As usual, Jacob amazed the doctors and was able to return home just five days after undergoing the operation to remove his primary tumour. He is sore and has lost weight but is recovering gradually, which is just as well as on the 17th March Jacob returns to Alder Hey for a procedure known as ‘Transplant’. This will involve high dose chemotherapy which will, to put it bluntly, knock the stuffing out of him. Jacob will then receive his remaining stem cells to help his bone marrow recover and enter isolation for up to six weeks. During this time he will become extremely unwell and vulnerable to a whole host of bacterial and fungal infections. Once chemotherapy is finished Jacob will then receive up to six weeks of radiotherapy, administered on a daily basis. If all goes to plan, this will then be followed by a six month course of a treatment called cis-retinoic acid which is given to kill any residual cancer cells which may still remain following chemotherapy and radiotherapy. We won’t pretend that we are not dreading this treatment, it is so intense that a small number of children don’t actually make it through. We are just thankful that Jacob has reached the stage where he can receive such treatment, for a while it looked as though he might not make it to this stage in the UK and we would now be in the USA. But here we are, our fight continues. Yes, Jacob’s consultant is now ‘hopeful’ about Jacob’s prospects in a way that she has never expressed before. There is some light at the end of the tunnel, but, if I’m honest we don’t dare to be too positive. We choose instead to take each day as a blessing and to enjoy the journey we are on. Where we are right now is all we can be sure of, the future is anybody’s guess.
Sunday, 24 February 2008
Rocky Seven