The meropenem IV antibiotic eventually started to make Rachel’s platelets go down and her white cells abnormally high, so they switched her to ceftriaxone for the final couple weeks of IV antibiotics. She was able to get off the IV ones and get the picc line out on August 13 and started oral antibiotics that evening. She’ll be on that for 6 to 12 months. The infectious disease doctor said there’s still a 5-10% chance that all of these antibiotics won’t clear up the bacterias and that if she were an older person he’d literally never take her off the antibiotics. Guess this explains why doctors are always so concerned about infection after a surgery.

Rachel had her first post-chemo haircut recently – her first haircut in more than two years. So exciting!

Rachel had her regular 3-month follow-up scans earlier this month. The CT of her chest had some really tiny spots show up that the doctor believes are related to the infection that she’s had. He stressed that they don’t look like cancer at all and are so small he could barely see them on the scan. The doctors in Maine were concerned about the position of one of the screws in her spine after seeing the MRI of her spine, but the surgeon in Boston reviewed them and said that the screw is stable and her spinal cord is safe so there’s nothing he would do differently or need to so surgery for. No evidence of cancer on the MRI either. ❤

This summer has seemed both really long and far too short at the same time. The past week or so has been extremely busy – shopping and packing for college, as both Rachel and Caitlyn move into their respective dorms tomorrow. Our household has experienced the full range of emotions the past couple weeks; I’ve never fully understood the term “bittersweet” until now…