MRI Results

I apologize in advance for our lack of update. It's been a busy 24 hours (or so).

VERY excited to see that there are at least 12 contestants in the burrito eating contest! Hooray! Come on out and support these crazy eaters! That's wonderful!

Yesterday was a busy day all around. Charlotte was active and feeling pretty good most of the day. Her methotrexate level was about 2.1 which is good (it has to be .01 before they can start the next part of chemo but usually after "day 1" it was around 3.). That means her body is flushing the "stuff" out of her at a good rate. They were monitoring her blood pressure for a little while as it seemed to be high...BUT then she pooped and the pressure seemed to drop back to normal. Again, hooray. Her appetite was good yesterday and she ate lots of fruit so I am sure that helped.

Auntie Retta visited in the morning and brought mom coffee and yogurt for breakfast. YUM. She and Charlotte played some Candy Land and we all had some good visiting time. Granny arrived at the hospital around noon. We took a few walks, went to the playroom, and she was in a very "artsy" mood, drawing and doing collages with stickers. I understand that the rest of her day was very active as well.

I left after signing the consent for her MRI today and headed over to Romp n' Roll where things were hoppin'. It was a very busy afternoon and evening with our registration event. Lots of fun and we didn't stop until after 8 PM!! It was good to see many of our regular customers and a few new faces as well. Lots of people asking about Charlotte.

Roger and I got to spend another night together. That is a rarity these days so we try to appreciate it. Now it's off for another busy day and a weekend ahead.

Many of you have commented to us about hoping that the MRI will show shrinkage of the tumor. Interestingly enough, my understanding from Dr. Khan is that we really don't expect a lot of shrinkage during the first stages of chemo. They just hope not to see any additional or new growth. Today they will be looking specifically at her spine to make sure that none of the remaining tumor has spread to other areas of the central nervous system. Until she starts the high dose chemo, they do not expect the tumor to die and/or shrink. Kind of depressing when you think about all that she has been through and how this really doesn't do much (visually) to solve the problem but I know and trust that this will be the right thing for her.

Gotta go get ready for a busy weekend. Can you believe it is May already? When we started this process, it was cold, wintry, and January. Now there is green everywhere and flowers in bloom. And we're starting to think about summer. Crazy!

OH an update about the cruise: I think we are pursuing options for a 5-day Disney cruise that will leave out of Port Canaveral (Florida) sometime in Mid-June 2010. There are more details to come but start to think about whether you and your family would be interested. We know that not everyone will be able to go but Charlotte would love to celebrate her recovery with you on a Disney Cruise! I've already got an idea brewing in my head for t-shirts...

I'm sure there would be some kind of initial deposit but the balance would not be due until April of next year so you have a year to save for the big event. We are working with our travel agent on this and will distribute more information when it is available.

Happy Friday!

Rachel

Charlotte went in for her MRI at about 12:30. I got to the hospital just in time to see her off into the capable hands of the radiologists. She was really funny when they gave her the "sleepy juice". As we may have mentioned before, it has about the same effect as a fast acting cocktail. So true to form with most of the women on my side of the family, she's a "fun drunk" (Roger can elaborate on that) :-) Anyway, she was very giggly and talkative and cracking up me and Granny.

Granny and I went upstairs to wait. She had a pretty good night from what I understand and slept well. Much thanks to Granny for staying with her and giving me and Roger a break.

She came back from the MRI still loopy but has since had some juice, most of an apple, and most of a hot dog. Now she's in Backyardigans Land (at least she's branching out from Dora).

No report from Radiology or Neurology yet about the MRI results but I did talk to Dr. Massey for a bit about her current levels. It looks like Potassium is good again but her Vitamin D is low. Not surprising because the chemo tends to deplete this nutrient a lot. Combine that with the fact that she isn't getting her normal daily dose of "outside" and we have low Vitamin D. Apparently we need to watch this pretty closely as long-term studies of kids with these kind of treatments sometimes result in low bone density down the road. So she'll probably get started on a Vitamin D supplement in addition to her multivitamin regimen.

The subject of radiation was once again broached as well. Looks like this will be even more of an inevitability. As she gets older and we see how the chemo progresses, they will tighten the plans for her protocol but since we weren't able to get 100% of the tumor out and the PNETs tend to be very aggressive, I think they are already looking forward to what type of radiation protocol we will need to consider. I don't have any more info on that yet but I'll find out and you (our loving fans) will be some of the first to know :-)

That's all I have to report for now.
Rachel

Big PS: (and the whole reason I signed on in the first place)...

The Fundraiser at Everything But Water (Short Pump Town Center) has been postponed until May 17th. More info to come soon.

Ok, folks...not so good news:

We got the MRI results back. The long and short of it is: the tumor is growing. It seems that the chemo has not done anything to stave off the growth of these cancer cells. PNET tumors are, as Dr. Khan says, "Notoriously Ill-behaved". And this one is no exception.
SOOOO...what does this mean, you may ask?
We are stopping chemo for now (no sense in putting her through more of this if it's not working). She will go home tomorrow. We may still see her counts drop a bit but hopefully not as much since she didn't get the full round of chemo this time. We will be back in the clinic next week to check levels. We will also have a consult with Dr. Tye next week. He is out of town at a conference this week but has spoken with Dr. Khan and while he has not seen the scans, they are already talking about the possibility of another surgery to debulk as much of the tumor as they can. This would be probably two weeks from now (we have to wait for the chemo to completely get out of her system and for her levels to come up). They have to weigh the pros and cons of a third surgery that will remove as many cancer cells as possible vs the risks of surgery, etc.
Whether or not surgery is an option, the next step will be RADIATION (yes, indeedy, we are there). It will probably be pretty localized (not full head or spine) at this point but probably about 30 days worth. This could start as early as four weeks from now (if no surgery) or later if she has to have surgery. This should be outpatient but just about every day.
And then we reassess and probably jump at that point to the high dose chemo. Hey, at least we're not in a time crunch to get the insurance company to agree with us now (see, I can see the bright side of things....)
Needless to say, this has been very disappointing to me. Roger knows the "scoop" but did not have the advantage of seeing the scans. We will get to meet with Dr. Khan again on Monday to go over questions, etc.

In good news, Charlotte has been in great spirits all day. Thanks to Granny's conversations with the nutritionist, we got some extra strawberries ordered for her and she ate them ALL (not to mention all the berries granny brought yesterday). She also had a visit from Lisa Branner (the Marketing Director at Qdoba who is organizing this great burrito eating EVENT on Sunday). She brought Charlotte chocolate ice cream (YUM!) dinner for me (YUM YUM!) and stayed and talked for a while. She actually got here while I was meeting with Dr. Khan so it was good to have someone to talk to immediately after taking in all this bad news.

Charlotte is deep into her sticker collage creations and made pictures for Lisa AND Dr. Khan. Now it's Dora Time. Anything for this Princess, that's for sure!!!

HUGS and Deep Breaths to everyone. May the prayers for healing continue.

Rachel