Diagnosis

Since we're both contributing to the blog we sometimes use the same account to write our posts.  We'll try to remember to say which one of us is writing the post.  Not that it really matters. :-)

Tim:

We just finished talking to the pediatric neurooncologists (children's brain cancer doctors).  The lab results are back, and Michael's specific cancer is called "anaplastic ependymoma".  It's pretty rare in children under a year old.  It's a very deadly form of cancer, but it has a decent cure rate.  There's a great deal of research being done on this specific type of cancer and how to treat it.  One of the world's leading experts on it just so happens to work here at our Children's Hospital!  What a tender mercy to our family.

The most effective treatment for this cancer is radiation.  Unfortunately, you have to be at least a year old to "safely" receive this sort of radiation treatment, and Michael is only six months old.  So Michael will receive chemotherapy in an effort to keep the cancer at bay until he's a year old.  Chemotherapy has mixed results at treating this form of cancer.  Radiation is pretty good at getting rid of it, but it's more effective when there's not much tumor to begin with.  So there's a possibility that the neurosurgeon will have to do another surgery before radiation treatments to remove as much of what remains of the tumor as possible.

Chemotherapy will take a couple of days every three weeks.  After a few rounds of that they'll determine whether it's having any effect and whether more surgery is required.  Sometime after Michael hits his first birthday he can start his radiation treatments, which are five days a week for six weeks.  All of the treatments will be done here at the Children's Hospital.  A few months after that the cancer will either be gone or deemed incurable.

The next step before all of this, of course, is for Michael to recover from his surgery.  Today was a pretty good day for him.  His fever is gone, the blood clot is looking pretty good, and we're able to hold him again.  He's slept and/or rested much of the afternoon, my job was to keep people from barging into the room and waking him up.

Liz drove home this morning to give the other children some mommy time and put out fires that had cropped up in the last few days since my home visit.  Just before she left the neurosurgeons visited us and expressed the concern that the Bell's Palsy in Michael's face may be permanent, but still held out hope that we won't know for sure for a few more months.  It was heartbreaking news to hear, and as I held Michael close after Liz left, there were a lot of prayers and tears.  I came to realize as I prayed to my Father for help, I was praying to Michael's Father as well, who loves our family very much.  I also realized that we need to put it into the hands of the Lord and continue to love Michael with all our hearts, no matter the outcome. 

Since Liz was at home in Fort Collins this evening, unfortunately it meant that she wasn't here for the diagnosis from the neurooncologists.  Fortunately one of them had a cell phone with a speaker phone, so she was able to follow the conversation and ask questions.  It's always a good thing and a bad thing when one of us goes home to be with the other children.  We've been leaning heavily on each other to get through Michael's illness, and are so grateful for those who are taking care of our children at home so we can both be with Michael at the hospital and support him and each other.  At the same time, our children really need a mommy and daddy, and it means the world to them and to us when one of us gets to go home for a visit every couple of days.