Sierra's Story: The Beginning Of The End

Sierra goes in tomorrow for her final chemo treatment, for the longest time this moment seemed so far away and now it is here. Sierra has had 8 months of chemotherapy, consisting of 18 rounds of chemo which included 24 hospital stays lasting from 2 to 11 days each. We are so blessed that she has done so well, she had the "normal" side effects from the chemo and had a few delays, but she was able to finish the full protocol. We have had such amazing support from family and friends, church friends and neighbors, and online friends and other osteo families. We are happy to be coming to an end of this journey, but are still apprehensive about where we go from here.

Sierra will have scans done in the next 2 weeks to check how her body has responded to these last 8 months of chemotherapy. The Chest scans are the ones we are most anxious about, if by some grace from God the spots that were in her chest have disappeared(prayers)we will be done with treatment and graduate NED(no evidence of disease), if the spots are still there, Sierra will have a thoracotamy(lung surgery) to remove and nodules in her lungs. After the surgery, or if she doesn't end up needing it, she will have scans every 3 months for 2 years, and every 6 months for the following 3 years. Osteosarcoma is known for coming back and is very aggressive, so we have to watch carefully, though the likelihood of it coming back after 2 years is lower, and so on as time goes by. We pray that Sierra will never have to deal with this cancer ever again, but we know that it is always a possibility that it will return.

Sierra has been doing amazingly well over the last month or so. She had her final Doxorubicin chemotherapy as an outpatient chemo, and it went really well. We had to go into the hospital 2 days in a row for her chemo to be administered and then we were able to go home and sleep in our own beds. I wish more of the osteosarcoma protocol was as outpatient chemo, I like being home at night as a family. Surprisingly, even though her blood counts did drop after the Dox, Sierra didn't end up with a fever. This was the only time she was able to stay out of the hospital when her counts were low, and she felt amazingly well the whole time. She didn't get the mouth sores she usually does and only needed to go in once for blood transfusions(though it took all day).

Sierra has been making a bit of progress with her prosthesis. She doesn't wear it as much as we would like, but she is getting more comfortable with it, and building strength to be able to wear it for longer periods. It is kind of a struggle to wear clothes with it, because she struggles to get her pants over it, and she can't wear it and use the bathroom, so we have some logistics that we are still figuring out, but it is a work in progress, and once she is done with treatment we will be able to focus more on getting her up and walking again.

At the church Halloween party, Sierra led the costume parade that evening, walking with her new prosthesis, and was very proud to show off to all of our supporters from church