Results

(This was written late last night, but due to some technical difficulties, didn’t get posted until this morning)

I’m not sure if this is the longest I’ve gone without posting before, but it’s gotta be up there. My apologies, but Eli has really been keeping us hopping, plus I didn’t have much to share besides the boring details of our doctor visits. I’ll start this update with medical stuff and end off with a recap of what fun things we’ve been doing. WHAT? The Horns doing fun things in NYC? Yes, I hear the collective gasp of shock and awe. To keep you reading, I’ll tell you that it involves witnessing an assault on the subway at 11 o’clock at night. 🙂

So as you know, this week was “scan week” where they did bone marrow biopsies, a CT scan, an MIBG scan, and a urine test. We have the results of all but the CT, so here is the rundown. Please make sure you are sitting down when you read these (I doubt many of you read these updates standing up, but some might do so from their cell phones). I’ll start off by reminding you of his stats before 3F8, which was in February:

Bone marrow: Aspirates were clean, but biopsy showed positive for NB in two spots.

CT : Nothing out of the ordinary, just some leftover surgery trauma.

MIBG : Spots on bones in head, shoulders and hips had gone away, but was still spots on his spine in the abdomen and above and below both knees.

Urine : Really close to the normal range (he was a 12 when ‘normal’ is a 10. When this all started, he was off the charts at 880!)

And here are the results we got back today:
Bone marrow – Aspirates are clean, both biopsy sites showed negative for NB. This is the first time Eli has tested completely negative for Neuroblastoma in his bone marrow!

CT – No results yet.

MIBG – There was a very small section of MIBG uptake in Eli’s abdomen, but it appeared to be soft tissue uptake and might not be anything at all. They will need to check the CT results because it is much more accurate in determining soft tissue involvement. Sometimes other tissue besides NB infected tissue can suck up MIBG radiation, so it might be nothing, but it might be some residual tumor, we’ll have to wait on the CT results. However, the MIBG did not detect any disease on Eli’s skeleton. I repeat, the MIBG scan saw no more NB spots on his bones anywhere!

Urine – Completely within the normal range (now a 5).

I can hear the “Praise God” comments from here and trust me, nobody is saying it more than us. As you know, we are all here fighting to achieve NED (no evidence of disease). Dr. Modak said that if Eli’s CT scan shows that the MIBG uptake isn’t a NB tumor, then Eli would be NED. If it is a tumor, then a second surgery might be in order. I actually saw Dr. Modak e-mail our radiologist and it started out, “I anticipate that he is NED” Wow, it was just so surreal to be seeing those words and know that they were talking about Eli. We’re trying to keep our excitement in check because 1) there is still a suspicious spot and 2) Neuroblastoma has a very high relapse rate, so there is a good chance that despite continued 3F8 (we pray he doesn’t come up HAMA positive on his test on April 24th), more Neuroblastoma could show up. His next scans won’t be until after Cycle 4 in June. Either way, it is great progress and we are so thankful for it. Many would fully credit the 3F8 treatments, but I’m applying James 5:16 and saying that the faithful prayers of so many believers has made a very significant impact.

Click “Older” for Part two: