On The Mark

It’s been six months since God decided he had other plans for Markus’ life. And it is a remarkable thing that in that time, all of which has been spent fighting off a deathly illness, there is a sense of normalcy that sets in. We’ve been reflecting on that a bit as the chemo routine has continued post-surgery on Markus’ arm. He’s had two treatments since surgery and both sets have been uneventful in that they are very similar to pre-surgery. Next week Markus has another follow up appointment with Dr. Clarkson, the orthopedic surgeon who removed the humerus bone. We are anticipating that Markus will be able to lose the sling he’s been wearing for the past 5 weeks and begin a more rigorous physiotherapy program to build back the muscle in his arm and shoulder. Last week we also learned a bit more information about the pathology report (the info has come in bits and pieces…we think because of docs being away on summer vacation). In the last blog we wrote how Dr. Clarkson was disappoin

It’s been over a month since Markus has had a chemo treatment. He’s even showing a few new hairs on his head, but the reprieve is over. Next week Tuesday he will be back in BC Children’s for his tenth round. Including this upcoming one there’s only five more to go! On Friday Markus had an appointment with Dr. Clarkson to see how the wound was healing and also to go over the pathology report. The bone he removed from Markus, as well as the surrounding tissue went under the microscope so they could see how many active cancer cells were still in the primary tumour that he removed. The other important part of the pathology report is to see if there were any cancer cells near the margins of the specimen. Dr. Clarkson was very happy with how Markus was healing. He also, together with the physiotherapist, gave permission for Markus to do some additional exercises in order to keep the other parts of his arm as functional as possible for now. When Dr. Clarkson went over the pathology report