About the treatment

Treatment for Leukaemia is 2years for girls and 3 years for boys. Christian has Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia ( ALL)-the commonest form of childhood cancer. It is rapidly progressing cancer of the blood which affects those white blood cells known as lymphocytes.

Treatment consists of chemotherapy and steroids.
Chemotherapy can be given orally , by injection into vein and injection into muscle. Christian is having all of these and also intrathecal chemotherapy which is injected into his spinal fluid under general anesthetic.

The treatment is outpatient so we just have to go in for a day, also certain chemo drugs nurses can come and give at home and I also give him oral chemo drugs.

We were so confused at first-all these drugs and names it is like a different language, but we know them all now. Took some time though :)
Obviously chemotherapy has side effects. Christian gets constipated, joint aches,tiredness.

Steroids also have very nasty side effects. Christian gets very hungry all the time, day and night, but because chemotherapy changes taste buds food doesn't taste nice to him. So he is hungry but not eating its like a wishes circle. Also he gets very angry, moody , they just completely change his personality. We were warned about it so we know it is not him, it is the steroids making him behave like this.
He also sweats a lot and his skin gets incredibly dry. At the beginning of his treatment when he was on the high dose of steroids I used to change his clothes all the time , because he would sweat so much, especially nights.

Treatment goes according on the regiment you are in, Christian is on Regiment B which is intermediate risk group, because his white blood counts were very high at the diagnosis, so he is getting a bit more chemo than regiment A.
Chemotherapy goes into the blocks and each block is for several weeks. He has finished his induction, consolidation ( very intensive blocks) and interim maintenance (not so intensive), he is now block 4 delayed intensification which is quite intensive. He will have 2 of these blocks and then for 2/5 years maintenance chemotherapy to make sure leukaemia will not come back.
As always there is this chance of it coming back and nobody can guaranty it will not but we just stay positive and hope that it will never come back.

Chemotherapy drugs damage fast growing cells. As well as destroying cancer sells,they also cause damage to normal cells. Therefore Christian is prone to infections, viruses if his white blood counts and neutrophils (they help to fight infections) are low and if he has temperature he has to go to hospital for few days for intravenous antibiotics.
Also it can affect his red blood cells and if they too low they cause anemia and he needs a blood transfusion ( he had many of them). It also affect platelet counts so he may bruise and bleed more easily and then he needs a platelet transfusion( had many of them also).