10-2-00
Guys -
Just so you don't have to hear it 7th hand...
We took Dalton to the emergency room Friday am after he fell off the bed - he was acting lethargic and so
they decided to do a CAT scan. When we got the CAT scan back, we realized that the fall off the bed was
not our problem - he has a tumor about the size of a
walnut in the middle of his brain. It's called a
pineal tumor or pineoblastoma - we think. It could be a different type of tumor, but the Dr is pretty sure
that's what it is. Can you believe the luck of him falling off the bed? One of the only things that they
would have given him a CAT scan for - and a CAT scan was the only thing that would have revealed the tumor.
They put a shunt in his head yesterday (Sunday) to drain the excess fluid - he's much more comfortable now.
His surgery is now on Tuesday... The chief of pediatric neorosurgery at children's hospital in DC
will be doing it - that makes me feel good - well, better, anyway.
The Dr. looked at the MRI yesterday and told us that it's probably malignant (cancerous). That means initial
surgery to remove it, a second one in a week to put in a permanent internal shunt (drains fluid from the
brain into the abdominal cavity where it's absorbed by the body) which he'll have for life, and aggressive
chemotherapy in the following weeks. The dr. told us today that there's only about a 3%
chance that it's not malignant - if it's not then he'll walk out of surgery tuesday just like he was before, but will
still have the permanent shunt put in. If he goes through chemo, there's about a 75-80%
mortality rate.
That's when our conversation with the Dr today got really hard - we started talking about that and
"quality of life" issues... There's also a chance that he'll have lasting neorological damage - whether
it's speech, vision, hearing, motor skills we don't
know yet (if it's any).
Overall a pretty crappy weekend. Safe to say the worst in my life. BUT - there has been so many things
that have happened that seem so much more than coincidence - the falling off the bed thing for
example. That in and of itself turned out to be harmless, but since it was a head injury, they ran a
CAT scan on him, which is when they found the tumor... as much of a blessing in disguise as anything has
ever been. There have been a couple other things like
that which have happened, that in retrospect just can't be anything but God's intervention. I'll have to tell
you about it when I've got more time - it's really unbelievable. So, given all of the
fortunate, dumb luck type of things that have happened, it's impossible to think that there's not some kind of plan
in motion, and I refuse to believe that the plan ends with us losing Dalton.
I'll keep you posted as things develop... There won't be any more news until this afternoon when we get the
initial lab work back from the spinal fluid - that will give us a heads up as to what kind of tumor it is
- and whether or not it's malignant.
Joe