Bad News Today on CT Scan

We unfortunately have very bad news to share today.  Brody had his CT scan today and the news was not good.  The tumor has gotten significantly larger.  He doesn't really have just one tumor and tumors are not really 2-dimensional so it's hard to explain exactly the change in size.  To give an idea though, an area that has been growing was measuring, in a 2-d way, 4.3cm by 4cm is now measuring 5.62 by 4.21cm.   His last CT scan was 3 months ago. 

The plan for now is to continue with the same chemo regimen for the next few weeks (until just after Christmas).  Then, we will start treatment/clinical trial at DeVoss Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  This is the trial we considered participating in back in late August/Early September when we feared Brody's tumor was getting larger again.  (We had thought Brody's tumor was growing at that time due to sudden worsening of Brody's kidney function after removing the stent in his right ureter.  The stent had been placed originally just before surgery to debulk his tumor.  It was placed only to help protect the ureter during the surgery and not because he was needing it for his kidney function.  So when he suddenly had kidney problems a few weeks after the removal of the stent, we feared that the tumor had grown large enough to block flow through the ureter again.  It turned out back then that this was not the case and instead it was scar tissue in the area from the stent placement that caused the problems.  Brody ended up getting another stent placed in the right ureter and had been doing well... actually, he feels well now still.  Most the time he feels pretty good.  Thank goodness!). 

Anyhow, the name of the trial is "Molecular-Guided Therapy for Relapsed and Refractory Childhood Cancer."  Here is a link to a news story about the trial. 

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/04/first_national_clinical_trial_1.html

Our oncologist spoke with team at Helen DeVoss Children's Hospital today.  After speaking with them, our oncologist felt it best to have Brody continue with current regimen for next few weeks.  He said that he was told that once we start with Helen DeVoss Children's Hospital that they will need to re-assess Brody and re-stage him etc etc etc.  This will take a few weeks.  Then the lab that does the testing and analysis on Brody's tumor samples will be closed for the weeks around Christmas and New Year's.  So due to the holidays etc we would end up with Brody being off chemo for significant amount of time getting switched to new regimen.  To minimize the time that Brody would be off chemo entirely, it's best to wait until after Christmas to get started with things in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Although Brody's tumor is getting bigger on his current regimen, it does at least slow the tumor down.  So, we don't want to be off it longer than necessary before switching to another option. 

We are, of course, very upset about today's news.  There are no words to describe the awfulness of the news today.  I am trying very hard to just concentrate on the things that are going right and trying to stay positive.  You never know, maybe Brody just might come out of this next trial cured of cancer.  Maybe the tumor getting bigger is a blessing in disguise.  If it hadn't, we wouldn't be taking steps to enter this other trial.