Heading for the Home Stretch

Nick is into his last third of his radiation treatments! Aside from being close to the end, this also means that his treatments will now only consist of the boost to the original tumor bed in brain as well as the tumor site in his spine. Hopefully since they no longer need to do his entire brain and spine, the treatment time should be a little bit less.

The entire family joined Nick in Florida for the New Year. We decided to take a trip to Orlando to see our favorite mouse. Boy was it crazy! The Magic Kingdom stopped admitting people by 11am! We tried hard to avoid the crowds and actually headed to the hotel early New Years Eve. Our goal was to get an early start on New Years Day while the majority of the people nursed their ailments caused from the previous nights festivities. Fortunately for us, one of the girls at the hospital had a brother who worked at Disney and they were able to secure a pass for us. This pass is equivalent to the "Keys to the Kingdom". It allowed us to get priority boarding on the rides, avoiding most of the lines (some of which approached 3 hours). I don't know how we would have fared had we not had this magical piece of paper. I have included a couple of pictures (much to the dismay of Samantha).

Many of you that we were able to see over the holiday, commented on how great Nick looked and how well he seemed to be doing. Well, he is doing great. He is a bit more tired than usual, but overall, he is holding up well. We too were amazed, and thought that all of the stuff we heard about the side effects of radiation just may not apply to Nick.....well of course we were wrong. A couple of days after Christmas, Nick started to notice a lot of hair on his pillow in the mornings. Each day, more and more hair started to fall out. It got so bad that even brushing his hair was impossible. This is a common side effect of the radiation treatment and should not be permanent. We have left it up to him as to whether or not he wants to shave his head completely. He has yet to decide, so for now he is wearing a hat all of the time. His initial reaction to losing his hair was pretty tough, especially after all that has gone on, but after a few days he seems to be handling it as well as he can. When the doctor asked him if he was losing his hair, he just reached up, grabbed a bunch, pulled and handed it to him without saying anything. I think that answered his question.