Jonas's Updates
Thursday, at his appointment to be admitted, Dr.Hughes showed us the side by side comparison of the old MRI with the new. And that stinking tumor has diminished significantly! Yay! Those images are just the hardest things to decipher, and I understand why it takes years of schooling to read them. It's like looking at a negative of a photo.Everything is shades of black and white: bones, cartilage, soft tissue, canals, sinus pockets, etc, etc. As a layperson, I have never been able to see exactly what tumor's perameters are or how many tendrils it has, or what it actually looks like (which is very frustrating to me). The only thing I have been able to make out is asymmetry: like when there should be two eyeballs, two nasal canals, two maxillary sinuses, and two of each of the other sinuses-, sometimes there was an obvious shadowing over one of the sides making it obvious there was a mass in the way. Well, this time, we almost didn't need a side by side comparison! It looked like almost everything was perfectly symmetrical! i couldn't really tell how much it had receded but the doctor said that they were very pleased and called it substantial. No doubt about it. The poison is working! Science isn't perfect, and we are no where out of the woods yet, but I am so grateful for all the strides they are making in cancer research. Trial and error. Working up new and more successfully proven protocol. Forty years ago cancer was a death sentence for children, but every year more children survive and are living longer and longer. Trust me, no one would put their child through this if there was something better out there proven to work. No one.
Jonas also told the doctor he noticed that they also did a spinal scan and wanted to know why. Dr. Hughes said that, yes it was true, they had. They did it because there was some indication that one of the tentacles showed some play at the skull base and he wanted to make sure it hadn't gotten to the spinal column....and he was pleased to say that it had not. So more good news all around. After our discussion, Jonas was so very pleased to be admitted for more chemo. "Bring it on!" he said. = )
