Sigh Of Relief

I dreaded Jacob's first CT scan post surgery. I wanted to know if his little body was responding to treatments, but I didn't want to know if it wasn't. I felt like our journey with cancer was just getting harder and harder. First, we were told that Jacob had Wilm's Tumor. That I could handle. Wilm's Tumor, after all, is one of the success stories of cancer advancement. It has a very high cure rate.

The next day we learned that it had spread and was now stage 4. We later learned that it was anaplasia Wilm's, which is unfavorable histology - meaning that it is harder to treat and drastically lowers the survival rate. Only 5% of Wilm's cases are unfavorable histology. To put it into perspective, only 400 children a year are diagnosed with Wilm's Tumor, and only 5% of those children have the unfavorable histology. Jacob's, being this histology, along with stage 4, puts him in a "high risk tumor" category...of which only 40 children a year are diagnosed. Yes, it is that rare. We had a better chance to win the lottery than to have a child with this condition.

So you can imagine why I was guarding myself against more bad news, knowing that the bad news seemed to keep piling on. I just couldn't handle more bad news.

I can now say that I've finally heard some good news. The CT scan revealed that the lesions (tumors) in the lung have all but disappeared. His body is responding to the treatments. The cancer is not gone...there is surely cancer cells floating around in his body...but things are happening. For today, I can breathe a sigh of relief. Finally, some good news.