Brody's CT Scan Results

Brody had a CT Scan yesterday. Getting the scan done was quite the ordeal. He was suppose to have the scan done on Monday but he was too sick to his tummy all day (lots of nausea and vomiting) to be able to drink the contrast drink before the procedure. So they had him come back in on Tuesday and gave him another chance to try and drink the contrast drink. He was not able to. As soon as he tried he started to gag and dry-heave. So they ended up placing an NG tube to get the contrast drink into him. He was NOT happy about that at all. But he did ok with it though. And amazingly he managed to keep the majority of the contrast drink down (although he did vomit just a little bit of it even with the NG tube in place). He did great during the scan (laid perfectly still during it). Brody felt much better the rest the day after the scan and was extremely excited to be able to eat again. By the time he finally got the scan done he hadn't eaten for far more than 24 hours and had been vomiting on top of that. He ate a bacon, egg, and cheese hot pocket after the CT scan and promptly asked for yet another one as soon as he had finished the first one. He also was drinking, drinking, drinking and drinking afterwards too. He was one hungry and thirsty little boy and fortunately his belly finally decided to cooperate and let the poor little guy keep something in him.

Brody's doctor called today with the CT Scan results. He said that the lymph node that was enlarged prior to his surgery to remove the tumor (lymph node right next to where his tumor was) is still enlarged. (The surgeon that removed Brody's tumor tried to remove the lymph node during the surgery to remove the tumor but was unable to do so because Brody became too unstable during the surgery and was bleeding a lot. The surgeon also thought that at the time the lymph node may have just been enlarged because of "fighting the cancer" rather than it containing the cancer and so could not risk to keep trying to remove the lymph node and also could not biopsy it either). Brody's oncology doctor said the good news though, is that even though the lymph node is still enlarged (they expected it to shrink if no cancer in it), the lymph node is still the same size as it was prior to Brody's surgery. Also, when Brody's tumor was removed it was sent to pathology and it came back that the tumor was all necrotic tissue and there was no live identifiable tissue remaining. Essentially all the tumor cells were dead. So Brody's oncology doctor feels it is very likely that the lymph node does contain the cancer cells but since it has not grown he suspects that, like the tumor cells that were removed surgically, that it is quite likely that the cells in this lymph node are all dead. So the plan at this point is to continue with the same chemo as he has been receiving. His last chemo treatment will be on Jan 10th. Brody will get another CT Scan in 12 weeks (Jan) to verify no further enlargement of the lymph node. After the chemo is complete, he will also keep getting regular scans to keep checking that nothing is growing back or lymph node getting larger.