Mason Status - Friday

It was a busy day.  Mason began the day with a kidney test.  

He looked like a mini Low Dr. in training.  :)

After that, he went for a CT.

Meanwhile, Leslie took Thomas to the occularist for an appointment...For a minute there she thought Thomas had pink eye, but then remembered that he had his eye cryo'd yesterday, and that's why it was irritated.  Hard to keep track when you have 3 babies all fighting the ugly Rb!

The boys are growing up!  They won't all fit in this chair much longer!

(Thomas has his eye patched in this picture because the occularist was refitting his prosthesis)

And then this evening...we got the update we waited all day for.

Plans have changed, again.

The MRI shows that the tumor is iceberg shaped, meaning that there is a lot more if it under the surface than what we were expecting.  As a result, the Dr.'s don't want to cut it out first, as this would probably cause seeding elsewhere.  If removed now, they would have to remove a lot of soft tissue.  Removing that much soft tissue has many disadvantages, including the way he wears a prosthesis.

So instead of the surgery, he will now begin chemo on Monday.  This way they can see how the tumor reacts to the chemo.  Hopefully it will shrink in size and they won't have to remove as much tissue.

Originally they wanted to do pathology tests on this tumor, but have decided to run those tests on the enucleated eye that was frozen for purposes like this.  The thinking is, this tumor escaped the eye cavity before Mason's enucleation, which means this tumor has the same DNA that the enucleated eye tumors have.

It is likely that this tumor 'seeded' when he had a mela injection back in April.  It is very uncommon for seeding to occur from a mela procedure.  Infact, it's never happened at this clinic.  But, against all odds, it did.  (Like a lot of other 'against all odds' scenarios for the Low's.) Tests suggest the Rb is localized to this one spot.  When the Dr's went back and examined MRI's shortly after his enucleation, they can see what they now know is the tumor.  At the time, it looked like swelling, which is to be expected following an enucleation.

The Dr's warned Leslie and Richard that there is a good chance they may have to do radiation eventually.  Radiation causes deformity and increases the risk of cancer down the road (ironically enough).  So, we are really hoping that he responds well to the chemo and he doesn't need the radiation, but time will tell.

Tough day.