He’s baaack! Eli is seeing some familiar faces here in Iowa City as he settles back into the life of an inpatient on the 3rd floor of the University of Iowa Hospital. I wondered how he would react to being back in the hospital since he’s been home for a while, but he hasn’t complained once about being here. He’s complained about a lot of things since we arrived, but not about being here. 🙂
Many of you have been asking about his test results. Here’s what we found out. His Bone Scan showed slight improvement over the last time. His MIBG Scan results were “stable”, meaning not much of a change, but the Doctors are actually disagreeing on that because some of them feel it looks improved. Remember, these results come from “Nuclear Medicine” which our Head Oncologist calls “uNclear Medicine”. The CT Scan came back and here are quotes from that report: “Previously seen intra-abdominal neuroblastoma is more than 50% decreased in size. There is also significant decrease in the intrathoracic component of the mass.” So, a decrease in size of over 50% is very good news. However, it also showed some damage to the right kidney. We’re not sure how significant that is, though, because his GFR test came back and says that his kidney function is normal.
The bad news is that there is still cancer in his bone marrow. This means it’s very unlikely that we’ll be able to rescue his stem cells after this round as planned. They want the marrow to be clear of cancer before they collect stem cells because that is what we’re going to be putting back into him and we want it to be neuroblastoma free. There is such a small window of time to collect stem cells that we’re not likely going to be able to do another bone marrow test AND have time to collect it if it’s clear all after Round 3. So, anyway, this is a prayer point. Pray that the neuroblastoma will leave the marrow and that we can collect clean stem cells sometime soon. The more rounds of chemo you do, the less likely you are to be able to extract good stem cells.
So far, so good for Round 3. No real negative side effects yet, so hopefully that continues. We aren’t as fortunate to have a private room this time, so that’s somewhat stressful. However, if you’re going to have a roommate, it’s hard to imagine having a better one than the one we had last night. Simeon is 6 and he and Eli hit it off right away. It was funny to see two little bald kids sitting together watching TV and playing with toys. They also influenced each other’s diets. Simeon ordered Broccoli, so all of a sudden Eli wanted Broccoli. Eli ordered pizza and the next thing you know, Simeon was ordering up pizza. They also both ate a lot, so I’m sure Food Service was wandering how many kids were staying in room 22! Simeon was only here for about 24 hours, so now it’s someone new.
I uploaded a few pictures. One is of Eli’s new favorite mode of transportation now that he feels better (standing on the IV pole and letting dad push him from place to place). He enjoys taking trips up to 8th floor to visit the library as long as he doesn’t have to walk the whole way. He also got attacked by nurses, held down against his will, and tattooed with a Herk tattoo! Ok, that’s an exaggeration, once they told him it would really make his dad mad, he was begging for one. 🙂
So, yes, there is good news, but there is also some discouraging news which hopefully gives you some specific prayer requests for your talks with God.