10/16 - Brain Tumor Roulette - When your number comes up.

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007
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Bad news folks. I really thought we were heading for the 5 year mark with clean scans all the way. We thought that after son #4’s brain tumor, we’d just have to hold our breath for 5 years (where something like 90% of kids who live that long with no recurrence survive cancer free) We’ve been kind of reeling for the last 24 hours, but a trip to the temple this morning calmed us down a bit, and put things in prospective.

Yesterday, when the radiologist called us into his office, ‘to show us some things’ rather than just coming out to the recovery room and saying, “everything’s fine, go home”, we knew there was a problem.

He showed us two spots on the MRI that he called, “areas that are very worrisome.” He said the two spots measured 5mm each (just less than 2 tenths of an inch). He also said that no doctor would operate on something that small, but suggested that we not wait 4 month until the next MRI.



Here’s what I’m hoping. I think it was at least a year ago, Dr. Hedlin, a radiologist, told us that there were 2 areas of concern, and that they would watch them. He said they looked like they could be scar tissue. I’m hoping that these are the same things he saw, and they were caught ‘just right’ by an MRI slice (one MRI image is a ‘slice’ of tissue, and several slices make up the whole study.)

Maybe it’s just denial, maybe it’s false hope, but it’s what we have. We’ve got brain tumor clinic tomorrow, and may find out more...

More on the brain tumor roulette on your kids life.

Marty