Countdown
- Details
- Published: Monday, December 15, 2014 05:52 PM
- Written by Katie Tyson
Every time we near the end of a treatment phase, Jim and I are handed the next page in the leukemia playbook. There it is, in impossibly small and deceptively tidy black and white print: the names of the drugs, their routes of administration, the dosage, the days that each is to be given, and the timing of requisite assessment studies. At the top of the page, in slightly larger bolder print, is the name of the phase as ordained by the Children’s Oncology Group, with the parenthetical (and for Callen, generally hypothetical) number of days to be spent in each. Induction (35). Consolidation (56). Interim Maintenance (63). Jim, upon completion of each of these three phases, has renamed them the “It Sucks”, “It Really Sucks”, and “It Totally F---ing Sucks” phases. And while perhaps less scientific or “appropriate”, I have to agree that his monikers have been far more representative of the actual experience.
But this last one? Oh, they nailed it.
