Hooray! He finally caught a break.

The tumor has collapsed!!

Collapsed mood = collapsed tumor. Whew!

Over the past week we were becoming increasingly concerned about Eli. His chemo-treatments were getting harder for him, seemed more painful and he had headaches afterward. Additionally, because he had been back at school, he had contracted a cold, had vomiting and diarrhea for 4-5 days and that was followed by cough and general runny nose and congestion. All of these factors would make anyone sad and depressed, and we began to see such signs in Eli. We weren't quite sure what was going on but it was really starting to seem like he had reached his limit and was becoming depressed. He cried for almost no reason, he was easily distracted and had lost interest in activities he used to enjoy. One evening, after telling us all day that he did not feel good, was tired, was sad, he said, "Mommy I feel terrible." Wow!!! What 2 year old uses such words? We were really concerned and when we went in for chemo on monday we talked to the social workers about books we could get and things we could do to help improve his mood.

Well, as is usually the case with Eli, there was an underlying physical reason for his mood: we didn't know it yet, but the tumor in his head was beginning to collapse and was causing him some real discomfort. When we went in for his treatment on Monday we talked about our concerns with his oncologist, Dr. Foreman, and we decided to continue with treatment and start drawing a little more fluid off the tumor cyst to try to drain it. As we had seen recently, when the fluid was being drawn off the tumor, Eli was clearly VERY uncomfortable. Then as Dr. Foreman began to draw off the extra fluid, we saw blood in the line! There was a stunned silence - other than Eli crying. What the hell was going on? Then things got really scary. Eli started slurring and saying his mouth hurt and he got very pale and and suddenly weak. Everyone went in to crisis mode and we quickly went down to get the CT scan in the picture above. The CT was done as a precaution to make sure that there was nothing terribly wrong with his brain. We had no idea what had happened, nor did we have any idea how encouraging the results of the scan would be.

When we got back upstairs the nurse practitioner gave us the wonderful news that the tumor had collapsed! We had unexpectedly already drained all of the fluid and the cyst had completely deflated. The picture above shows 4 slices through Eli's head comparing a CT on 4/15/2009 (left) to the one on monday 5/4/2009 (right). I think it is quite obvious that the enormous egg which just weeks ago inhabited his skull has been thoroughly squashed. This seems to explain why he had been so uncomfortable during this most recent round of chemo: the shrinking tumor was messing with his brain (pulling and moving things around) and causing him substantial discomfort.

We are so relieved and happy. The tumor is not gone, but the bulk of it, which has caused so much damage, has probably been eliminated. This was the best outcome we could have hoped for (at least up to this point) for this treatment. We know it is unlikely that this will cure him of the tumor but it is a very slow-growing (non-malignant!) tumor and it will give Eli some time for his brain to develop before he has to have surgery or radiation to remove what is left.

Now we just wait and get the tumor scanned every so often to see if it's growing. No more chemo (no more "counting with Dr. Foreman," as Eli says), we won't be at the hospital 3 times a week and hopefully we can live relatively normally for awhile. Eli will have an MRI in three weeks to give us a really good picture of what is really left of the tumor. We will have a better idea then of how long we'll wait before the next scan and what the likelihood is that the cyst will re-grow anytime soon.

Eli is happy and seems to be feeling much better today. Hopefully he will continue to feel better and better. Maybe we can take the summer off from the hospital and really enjoy being back in Colorado, together.

Meagan, Jacob and Eli