Really astounding news!
Today we had some truly excellent, mind-boggling news: Little B's tumors in his spine are GONE! AMAZING!
When Little B's brain tumor was diagnosed, we had to do a spine MRI as well. The reason is because Little B's brain tumor was on his brain stem, in his fourth ventricle. The ventricle has spinal fluid sluicing around in it, and sometimes bits of the tumor break off and set up tumor shop in the spinal fluid/spine. This is bad, as the tumors are not really operable.
Little B's spine MRI indicated he had what we thought was a 4 mm spine tumor, as well as other smaller tumors. The caveat, of course, is that we can't really know what was going on in the spine. MRIs just show that *something* is there, not *what* is there. They can't do a biopsy, as they can't go rooting around in a person's spinal fluid. It also really doesn't change the treatment protocol -- Little B needed chemotherapy due to the brain tumor, and hopefully the spinal tumors would respond if the brain tumor responded.
In this case, the marks on the MRI (that we took to be a tumor), could have been due to Little B being malnourished due to all of the vomiting due to the brain tumor placement. When the body repairs itself and builds up its reserves, the spots can disappear. But we aren't sure one way or another -- tumor or deposits due to malnutrition? It could have been the chemotherapy. It could have been the weight he's packing on. In all honesty, I don't give a crap what they technically were, so long as they stay gone. I know it sounds simplistic, but a clean spine MRI is a clean spine MRI. And that's awesome news.
The brain MRI confirmed our preliminary thoughts: no tumor growth, just the rind sitting on the floor where the tumor was removed. And stability is amazing. In all honesty, it is a thin rind, so I'm not sure how they would measure it in terms of technical growth. I will harass Little B's oncologist about that next week.
We will continue on with chemo to finish out the course of treatment (unless something goes sideways). The tumor type Little B has is slow-growing... sometimes it seems to hibernate, if you will. The important thing for this tumor type is to just keep hitting it, over and over, until it gives up. Unfortunately, I know a number of families who have 2, 3, and even 5 years of stability, and then it starts back growing. In any case, unless something surprising happens, we're doing chemo until the end of next summer.
In all, this has been just a tremendously positive day. I always say that I hate MRI time because I know I'm going to be crying (either from the bad news or the good news). This has been a time of many, many happy tears.
When Little B's brain tumor was diagnosed, we had to do a spine MRI as well. The reason is because Little B's brain tumor was on his brain stem, in his fourth ventricle. The ventricle has spinal fluid sluicing around in it, and sometimes bits of the tumor break off and set up tumor shop in the spinal fluid/spine. This is bad, as the tumors are not really operable.
Little B's spine MRI indicated he had what we thought was a 4 mm spine tumor, as well as other smaller tumors. The caveat, of course, is that we can't really know what was going on in the spine. MRIs just show that *something* is there, not *what* is there. They can't do a biopsy, as they can't go rooting around in a person's spinal fluid. It also really doesn't change the treatment protocol -- Little B needed chemotherapy due to the brain tumor, and hopefully the spinal tumors would respond if the brain tumor responded.
In this case, the marks on the MRI (that we took to be a tumor), could have been due to Little B being malnourished due to all of the vomiting due to the brain tumor placement. When the body repairs itself and builds up its reserves, the spots can disappear. But we aren't sure one way or another -- tumor or deposits due to malnutrition? It could have been the chemotherapy. It could have been the weight he's packing on. In all honesty, I don't give a crap what they technically were, so long as they stay gone. I know it sounds simplistic, but a clean spine MRI is a clean spine MRI. And that's awesome news.
The brain MRI confirmed our preliminary thoughts: no tumor growth, just the rind sitting on the floor where the tumor was removed. And stability is amazing. In all honesty, it is a thin rind, so I'm not sure how they would measure it in terms of technical growth. I will harass Little B's oncologist about that next week.
We will continue on with chemo to finish out the course of treatment (unless something goes sideways). The tumor type Little B has is slow-growing... sometimes it seems to hibernate, if you will. The important thing for this tumor type is to just keep hitting it, over and over, until it gives up. Unfortunately, I know a number of families who have 2, 3, and even 5 years of stability, and then it starts back growing. In any case, unless something surprising happens, we're doing chemo until the end of next summer.
In all, this has been just a tremendously positive day. I always say that I hate MRI time because I know I'm going to be crying (either from the bad news or the good news). This has been a time of many, many happy tears.
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