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Sofia is 8 years old, off treatment over 4 years and doing great.
Diagnosed 6/10/03 (at age 19 months), pre B ALL standard risk, POG 9905 arm C, no chromosomal abnormalities, 2 - 1/2 yr treatment, remission since 7/10/03 and off treatment since 12/22/05!!
Journal
Tuesday, January 5, 2010 9:37 AM PST Hello - I was just reading a friend's Caringbridge page (she was just diagnosed with breast cancer, but doing well) and I realized I have not updated or even looked at Sofia's website in two years! Wow...what a nice change!
We had a wonderful holiday which also marked Sofia's 4th year off treatment/chemo. We are now beginning her 5th year chemo free. The odds of her relapsing and getting Leukemia are probably less than 5t this point and at the end of this 5th year she has the same odds of getting Leukemia as any other child - back to where she was before the whole cancer thing started. Wahooooo!!!! So, expect a big party Dec, 2010 to celebrate the end of five years off treatment!!
In the meantime, Sofia is now 8 and loving third grade, friends, gymnastics, basketball, roller and ice skating, swimming (in the warmer months, of course!) and is just learning to snow ski. She has absolutely no signs of side effects from her chemo program and we are so thankful. She was on the high risk dose of chemo for her first 45 days of treatment but they downgraded her to medium risk for the following 2 years of treatment and perhaps that slighly lower level of toxins is the reason??!! Who knows -we are just glad!
Andreas is now 11 (12 in several weeks...yikes!) and only a couple of inches shorter than me and about the same weight. I guess I had better be nice to him now that we are the same size :-) He is still our wonderful, happy guy and loves his ATV rides, playing in the snow, tennis and swimming in the summer, and just started on a new basketball team. He is thinking of switching to snowboarding rather than learning to ski...we shall see. He still loves electronics and likes to take apart computers and anything else he can find. We are still working on the putting them back together part...hmmm!!??He is doing well in 6th grade but realizing he will have to really start studying harder now in a few subjects to keep his grades up. No kid likes coming to that realization!
They are both continuing to learn Greek and active in church as well. We hope to make it to Greece again in the next year or two. We haven't been back for a few years now.
Yianni is working way too much as always - such a dedicated guy. But, he has started taking more vaca time and weekends off which has been wondeful for the whole family. But, even that additional down time did not hold back his new strands of grey hair! He is still taking his power walks and listening to audio courses on world history, religion philosophy and economics. As I now remind him frequently, he is just trying to get smarter than me!
I am enjoying my stay-at-home mom lifestyle. I joke that I am just as busy as when I was working - just not paid now! The kid's school requires quite a bit of volunteering and I far surpass even that requirement each year because I enjoy being with the kids and helping out. I am also doing all of the traditional mommy things like being a Girl Scout leader and helping out Andreas' Lego robotics team. But, I am tring to keep my brain agile should I ever want to go back to work full time so I do some part time consulting here and there and managed a large website and small database for an auction fundraiser last fall. It was fun to be back into the technology world again! Oh, and my new grey hairs? Hidden by my highlights, of course!
The rest of the family is doing well. Nana Sharon is still next door and YiaYia Maria is just a few miles down the road. Thea Evangelia is a bit farther - maybe 20 miles up the hill and Uncle Kyle is the national long distance winner as he is in Sandpoint, Idaho now. Papou Dennis is the international long distance winner as he alternates between Canada and Greece each year.
Pets are also important family members. Mykonos finally passed on just a few months after Santorini. They were 18 and 17, respectively. Then we got Ouzo, a sweet little black kitten who disappeared after only 9 months or so. The kids (and Yianni) were heartbroken. A few months later we gave up hope and YiaYia got us another black kitten we named Tadger. He also disappeared over the holidays of 2008 but then reappeared and has stuck around ever since. We hope he sticks around for 17 or 18 years like his feline predecessors.
Well, that is all for now. Expect an update...and a party...December of 2010!
Thsnks for all of your love, support, good wishes and prayers for so many years.
Kelly
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