Accutane and Anti-B's complete!

Hi,
Before I give the update, I want to share a more positive statistic about NB that I heard up in Chicago and I didn't include in either of my two previous posts. I heard that once you're Stage IV and you've made it through Induction (the initial treatment phase we just completed) and you get a set of scans to show that you're NED (no evidence of disease) 50% of kids will enjoy "event free survival". I think that statistic is a bit more positive than many of the others you hear. If I misinterpreted this - please don't correct me! I sort of hold onto it as a beacon of hope:)

Just wanted to report the good news that Hans has completed his second (0f 6) round of Accutane. It's a relief, because Accutane is pretty harsh, and even though he's only on half of his normal dose now it seems to affect him. It's funny, it doesn't clearly make him more irritable, but it does seem to weaken his whole steroid balance and it seems to make him more fragile in general. Thankfully it's only a "short-term" medication. We have been told that for the next round the docs want to take the dose up by 50%. We'll see how that goes! We also finished up his antibiotics for the little cold he started to get at the ranch. He still has a little bit of the sniffles, but I think he's doing pretty well. Now were tapering down from his stress dose of steroids and are hoping for stability!

The weekend was okay. Hans and Kevin were mostly home bodies to allow Hans to just mellow out. The antibiotics weren't easy on his tummy, so he didn't get out much. I watched Elle's soccer game and her little team is still undefeated! Go Dragons! Elle had her first opportunity to play laser tag at a birthday party and she said we all had to go back. She also got invited to visit a friend's drama class on Saturday and had a blast. She showed me all the Broadway-like dance moves they learned. Then, on Sunday we went and had BIG FUN at the BIG STATE Festival. I won a pair of tickets on he radio. Kevin said that he and Hans were out, so Elle's friend Genna, and her mom, my friend Laurie were "in." It was cool that they were able to come along at the last minute. We saw Willie Nelson, Stock car racing, a couple other bands, and then Tim McGraw. It was pretty cool. The festival food was really awesome. And, the festival was put on by the Parks and Wildlife Department, and I was really impressed with how many recycling receptacles they had there. It's the type of thing I probably wouldn't have thought to buy tickets for, but by winning them, we had a free day of fun, and I had a little girls' day out/off Mommy duty. I sure can't complain about that! I think Kev and Hans were okay with football and one of Hans' favorite things - a visit from the pizza guy!
This week is pretty quiet. Not much going on until the Bone Scan on Friday.
I'll write more later. I'm going to be writing about Lunch for Life again soon. We're expecting to get Hans' lunch bags this week!
Love, Lara
PS Patrick had most of his scans last week and they just got the news that he's All Clear!