Scan Results

     Yesterday evening shortly before our family dinner Christie got a phone call. As she answered she called out, "It's the clinic." As the sound of her voice trailed off, I shouted back, "Where are you going?!" She didn't hear me. I had wanted to hear the conversation in real time, but I was getting something for one of the kids. I got to her right before she hung up with the doctor. She gave me a thumbs-up. Ethen's oncologist had called to let us know that Ethen's scan indicates the tumor has shrunk by 50% since the last scan (in May).
     It's been a while, so I feel I should write a brief refresher. When the oncology team found the tumor in March the abdominal mass was 8.9 cm x 9.5 cm, but some tumor also stretched up into Ethen's thoracic cavity along his spinal column where it was entangled with some of his blood vessels. One of Ethen's lymph nodes was completely necrotic, which was biopsied. The tumor had also metastasized and was found in Ethen's right ocular orbit and in his left femur. In May, after two treatments of chemotherapy, the scan at that point indicated the tumor had reduced to 3.8 cm x 4.4 cm and appeared to have retracted back out of his thoracic cavity to some extent. The cancer in his ocular orbit and femur was not visible on the scan in May. The most recent scan revealed that the abdominal tumor had reduced to approximately 1.5 cm x 2.7 cm (as best as Christie can remember from the phone call), and the extension into Ethen's chest had reduced to 1.5 cm x 1.5 cm (again, from memory) and does not appear to be entangled with vessels and other organs. The tumor board will meet tomorrow to discuss Ethen's case to determine the viability of surgery at Levine's. If it's too complicated they may recommend that we go to Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, because of their years of experience dealing with neuroblastoma cases. For now we plan to go to Levine's on Tuesday (Aug 1) for Ethen's surgery.
     We are thankful and humbled by God's grace to Ethen and us throughout treatment so far. We know we are not out of the woods yet, as it were, but we rejoice in little victories. We praise God that the chemotherapy has been effective in shrinking the tumor. Thank you all for your prayers.
     Going forward, please pray for Ethen's surgery. Pray that his body is well-prepared for surgery and its aftermath. Specifically, please pray that he will get some good calories (some substantial proteins and not just saltines) and gain weight again (he lost some over the past two weeks). Pray that the surgical team can prepare well based on the CT image, and that they can get all of the tumor. They'll be opening him up from what we know, which can have its complications. Please pray there are no complications and that Ethen can recover well.