childhood cancer

childhood cancer

Saturday, December 24, 2011

A plan of sorts

Luke has been into hospital, had the fourth round of chemo, and come out again in good time for Christmas. He seems to be finding it tougher in the sickness department but his anti-sickness prescription has increased and will hopefully keep the worst of it away. While he was in hospital I shampoo'd his carpet, as it was getting a bit smelly in his room from all the sickness episodes that couldn't be beaten with cleaning sprays. It lasted about 24hr hours after he came home and needs doing again now! Oh well, next time he's in again we'll do it.

We had a good long conversation with our consultant while Luke was in. Radiotherapy is now totally off the agenda, so we won't be off to Florida. On balance the risks outweigh the benefits. Apparently the specific tumour Luke has (they still haven't fully classified it) lies in a range from one which they would always need to treat with radiotherapy to one which they would almost never need to. If its the latter, the chemo and surgery should do the trick. At this moment, because of Luke's size, his kidneys are in close proximity to the tumour site. The radiotherapy would almost certainly lead to kidney failure. That would necessitate a transplant. The real kicker is that, should the tumour come back, or if luke got cancer later in life, he couldn't have chemo again.

Clearly if the tumour doesn't need radiotherapy then we don't want to put Luke through that with all of its consequences. If it does need radiotherapy then the tumour will most likely come back. But by that time hopefully Luke would be older, bigger, and his kidneys would be further away.

So the plan is now to have an MRI early January, surgery late January, five more sessions of chemo similar to those he has already had, then up to six months of maintenance chemo. Then we wait, cross fingers, toes and everything else, and have regular MRI's for the next
Five years and beyond.

There isn't as much certainty as the old plan, but there is less risk. We can live with that. Especially given my last question to the consultant was can they still cure Luke. Looking straight into my eyes, the answer was that yes, that's still the aim.  That has to be good enough for us.

Have a great Christmas everyone. We will be spoiling our amazing son rotten on our first Christmas with him in our lives.

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