Bone Marrow Clear!

Good news tonight...Dr. Asselin called at 7:30 to tell us they just received another "all clear" report for Brady's bone marrow! This is great news and just another piece of the puzzle. She seems more certain that we are dealing with Stage 3 intermediate risk neuroblastoma. That basically means that prognosis is "favorable." That word annoys me...doesn't sound bad, doesn't sound great. Remeber though, that the MIBG scan coming up could still show cancer show where else in this body. We are still on track to be at Strong tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday during the day. Then home for the weekend, and back on Monday to begin the battle.

Please pray in the following areas:

1. Comfort for Brady. The steroids are causing him to not be able to sleep for any period of time. Poor honey, it is heart breaking to watch him...so agitated, so sad, so confused. We are being allowed to give him Benydryl tonight to help him sleep...pray that it works.
2. More comfort for Brady! Tomorrow he will need an IV and that is not a fun thing for a toddler. He also will need to get his stitches out (we are estimating there are about 100 of them). He will be having his Broviac placed surgically on Monday...more pain.
3. All remaining tests and scans to be clear!!!
4.Continued strength for Matt and I and our families.

Hope

This is Matt joining the blog. Today Brady had a bone marrow extraction, CT scan, and a PIC line inserted for chemotherapy. We just spoke to the chief oncologist and got our first bit of good news, although preliminary. So far the CT scan does not show cancer in any organs. It still hasn't been read by the radiologist. Also encouraging about the CT scan is that the spinal cord seems to be mainly decompressed and back to its normal position. The tumor had invaded the spinal canal as well wrapping around it. This could mean that there may not be permanent nerve damage, however, way too early to tell. The surgery last night was very involved, but seems to have been successful. Before the surgery, there were several levels of his spinal cord in which the tumor took up more space than the spinal cord. The preliminary bone marrow results are negative. This means there isn't a large amount of cancer in the bone marrow. There could still be neuroblastoma cells in the marrow in smaller amounts, we will find out more tomorrow. Brady is off of the ventilator and breathing on his own. We were able to hear his cries for the first time since yesterday...what a beautiful sound. This is serious cancer and our treatment path from here is uncertain. We know it will be difficult and involve chemotherapy and possibly stem cell transplant, but there was definitely hope given today. God does answer prayer. Matt and Meg