UPDATE: What Happened To Today’s Check-Up

Hello everyone. Just giving you an update on how’s everything going on with Carlisle’s health and what his doctors say about him. So we had a whole day of follow-up checks again for today (actually for every second Monday) to his pediatrician, ophthalmologist, neurosurgeons, and pedia-oncologist.

PEDIATRICIAN. I’ve decided to have Carlisle checked by his pediatrician every month for me to be sure that he’s doing fine and nothing’s wrong. So far, everything’s fine with his health, nothing unusual has been heard from his lungs, ears and throat is clear. We are scheduled to take tuberculin test today, because I was worried about his previous X-ray tests. It always returns as him having some lung infection close to primary or something, which results us for taking a whole week dose of antibiotics. I know for a fact that those doesn't taste good, I used to throw my antibiotics in the sink when my mom wasn't watching. We were then scheduled for a follow up on Wednesday for test reading.

OPHTHALMOLOGIST. Gee, we missed the schedule. :( This was supposed to be a reading session of his recent MRI to know if his eyesight improved.

PEDIA – ONCOLOGIST. Instead of the 4:00PM schedule, his doctor’s secretary called us to go in an earlier time because the doctor has a meeting and might not be able to attend to his scheduled checks. So we went to the clinic, and talked to her about what our pedia-neurologist told us to do. She said chemotherapy is not an option, because Carlisle’s brain tumor is designed not to respond to it. We’re only left with radiation therapy then. As per the doctor, radiation indeed should be done on kids three years old and above, which is the advisable age. But then, it can be done as early as 24 months (two years old) but not advisable because this is the time when the brain is actually growing. She said they need to talk about it with her fellow oncologists in a conference whether they will allow us to go with radiation on March (which is his 24th month) or wait until he’s three. Tomorrow would be the result on what they've talked about. I hope it’s for the better.

MRI image last December 2013 showing a sudden decrease of the tumor size.

NEUROSURGEONS. They are the ones that moved me today. They declined the usual bi-weekly drain from his shunt because they need to wait for what the pedia-oncologist will say. They told me the same thing that our pedia-neurologist told us: they are not satisfied with the size that the tumor had reached. They said it might be possible that the size have increased again – they won’t know since we were not able to perform a post MRI session when we’re still confined due to lack of budget. They just instructed me to bring Carlisle to the hospital whenever I noticed that his usual self decreases its energy. That’s the time that they will drain from his shunt.

What a long tiring day. I still have work to do. First shift of the week! Another week without me by his side when he sleep. Haaaay. Let’s do this!