Milestones

This is a Sharps box.


Into it goes used, biohazardous medical supplies. This one contains a few hundred needles and syringes, several dozen near-empty vials of chemo medication, a few odd lengths of medical tubing and two years of unpleasant memories.


This is the same Sharps box packed up and ready for mailing to a facility where it will be burned then properly disposed.

We took this box to the post office the other day because Thing 1 finished with her weekly shots of methotrexate, the vile yellow drug that has helped keep her juvenile myositis in check after it hit full-force when she was not yet 3. Her ritual Sunday night panic pukes in anticipation of those shots have been replaced by her simply swallowing two little orange-red pills once a week for the next two months.

Then, we hope, it will be just one little orange-red pill for another two months.
And when there are no more little orange-red pills to take, we will wait another month or so. If all remains quiet, we will slowly ween her off the next drug, cyclosporine.

Then, if things continue to go right, we'll be able to start tapering her off CellCept.
Then maybe -- just maybe -- 18 months or two years from now, she will have taken her final dose of medication to stave off juvenile myositis.
*
It's nearing six years for you on this long, awful journey, my precious little girl. Each day you crawl closer to your goal.
A life free of medications.
A life free of blood draws.
A life free of those clunky night braces to help stretch your rigid ankle muscles.
A life free of any sign or symptom of this stupid autoimmune disease that tried to overtake your body before you had even gotten out of diapers.

You will not be like little Mikey, who never got to go to kindergarten let alone be a firefighter.

You will not be like Brandi, whose funeral your Mom wept at last year.

You will be one of the lucky ones to make it, my precious little girl.
I can feel it deep, deep down inside.