May 20, 2026

Oliver is back in surgery to get his central line removed. Unfortunately, the type of bacteria he has often develops a biofilm around the central line and the only way to guarantee that it doesn’t come back again is to get the line out. Hitting him with a really toxic chemo and then having a bacterial infection come back would be incredibly serious and life-threatening, so we don’t want to risk it.

The plan is to have a couple peripheral IVs put in his arm while he’s asleep so we can keep giving IV antibiotics for about 48 hours. Once we culture the blood and we know we have cleared the infection, we will get a new line in (hopefully Friday). We will go home after his line placement and do oral chemo and antibiotics at home so he can do a 14 day course before we start chemo again.

It’s taken us time to process this as it came as a shock and is a very disappointing outcome.. it feels like everything this year has gone wrong. Having two extra surgeries and having to start this chemo over is very discouraging. We are grateful to have this time at home with him and also hopeful that maybe this will buy us a little more time to potentially get ahold of the drug to work into this chemo round.

Oliver is feeling much better these days and is so sweet!