Pathology update

It's been very nice to be back home this week. Wednesday was a bit rough for Eila still, but she's been feeling better and better each day. The hole from her drainage tube has finally stopped leaking, we are all very happy about that. Her incision is healing, although it's much bigger than the one from last year and it looks much rougher (poor kid will have a pretty major scar from this round).

From Sept/Oct 2012

On Friday, we got back most of Eila's pathology report, just waiting on the LOH (loss of heterozygosity) still. It has favorable histology and clear margins (i.e. they removed all the tumor)! This is great news because it means she won't need radiation on her kidney.

We have been struggling with the issue of whether to increase Eila's chemo regiment. Unfortunately, because Eila's diagnosis (metachronous bilateral Wilms' tumor) is so rare, there isn't a protocol to follow.  However, because Eila's tumor shrank more than 80% in the six weeks of chemo before surgery, our doctors and the experts they consulted believe that Eila's cancer is responding well to her current regiment.  They are recommending that we stick with the current schedule of three drugs - this is a huge relief. Adding additional drugs would have presented us with a whole host of new challenges, including a much sicker Eila and a series of extended hospital stays.  Under our current scenario, Eila's chemotherapy can continue on an out-patient basis.  She goes back up to Portland on Monday for week 7 of chemo, then only 18 more weeks to go ...