Spinal Tap

Her spinal fluid did NOT have any cancer cells in it. Now we just have to hang in there, keep at therapy, and try to gain weight until we go back to meet with the chemo folks later this month to discuss what we are going to do.

Nothing New

I figure that I ought to post an update just in case anyone is wondering. No news so far. If we haven't heard anything we'll call on Wednesday to find out about the spinal tap. She is doing good. her hair is coming back slowly. She has been reading a lot lately which is a good thing as far as exercising her eyes. 

What We Learned

So what exactly did we find out today? Nothing. Okay, so that's not entirely true, but that is kind of what it feels like. So let me try to use my amazing psychic abilities to anticipate your questions.

Are they going to do chemo? Maybe, but not right now. Her immune system still hasn't recovered enough from radiation that they would even begin to feel comfortable assaulting her bone marrow with Chemo.

So, what are they doing? They took her blood to test her immune system as mentioned above. They also took some spinal fluid to see if there are any cancer cells floating around in there. She is just inside line between what they consider a serious case and a not-so-serious case on the not-so-serious case side.  They are also trying to decide what needs done because the vast majority of medulloblastoma tumors are in children so they are trying to "Extrapolate" aka guess what should be done in the case of an adult. There just aren't enough cases of adult medulloblastomas for there to be any conclusive steps to take in order to ensure the best chance for survival.  that leaves us with a benefit vs. harm question. If there are cancer cells floating around inside her fluid then we will need to move forward with chemo asap. If not, I don't know.

But, wasn't her scan clean? yes, but it only shows things that are visible. We don't know what is going on microscopically. Additionally the doctor said that these tumors have about a fifty percent chance of coming back within 10 years. Not only that but medulloblastomas will sometimes show back up in weird places outside the brain (liver, lungs, etc.) which is different from most brain tumors.    

We feel kind of "Yuck" about all of this, but it is just another mountain that we will have to surmount as best we can. Not what we had hoped, but not a surprise either.