It's Shrinking!!

On Thursday we met with a nephrologist at Seattle's Childrens Hospital for a second opinion.  Joel and I have felt like our oncologist has worked hard to help us understand Eila's situation and options, but have not felt comfortable with the level of interactions or information from her nephrologist in Portland. 

Dr. Symons was very helpful and we were happy that we made the trip.  He went over lots of information and different kidney scenarios with us for 2 hours, and we feel like we understand things much better now.  Eila's kidney will be closely watched during the next several months of chemo, and there will be more decisions in the future (like dialysis and transplant), but the conversation with Dr. Symons helped us understand this better. 

After our morning nephrology appointment, we got back into the car and drove to Doernbecher's for Eila to have an ultrasound to see if her tumor is responding to the chemo.  Although Eila's had more ultrasounds than I can count, we still can't decipher anything on the screen without help from the doctor.  So we were very eager when Dr. Thomas called us to report that her tumor is already 40% smaller after two weeks of chemo!!  This means that the tumor is responding to the chemo drugs and supports the thinking that this third tumor is an independent tumor and not a recurrence of a previous tumor -- all good news for Eila! 

We will continue with her weekly chemo treatments and plan to image it again at 6 weeks -- the surgeon would like to see the 6 week images before making plans for surgery.  But now, we are very happy with this news and hope that it will get much, much smaller so that the surgeon can preserve as much of Eila's right kidney as possible.