Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Weird ABR Results; Surgery!

The results of Andy's ABR test were weird. Very weird indeed. His high-range hearing is fully restored. Yes, fully restored. How? No frickin clue. It's not supposed to happen. However, he has "very mild" hearing loss at lower frequencies. They didn't say what frequencies, but as of now it's not to the point to where it will affect his speech development.

Although the surgeon who originally hacked away at Andy is no longer staffed at Glennon, he still has priviliges at Glennon and is still covered under my insurance so we're going to use use him again. You'll recall Julie and I were very fond of the guy. Andy's oncologist has been in touch with the surgeon and they've pretty much decided to go straight to surgery, no 4th chemo cycle.

Unfortunately they need to do his CT scan on Monday, so that puts a halt to my trip to Baraboo, WI. And lemme tell ya, I'm not too excited about putting it off any longer than I have to. (think weather)

So quick-like, here's the schedule:

Friday - Chemo (still 3rd cycle)
Monday - CT Scan
Wednesday - Surgery

Now elaboration. Friday concludes his chemo for the time being. Monday is his CT scan to get one last look at this thing before they go in.

Wednesday's the big day. We don't know too many details just yet, but it's safe to assume he'll be back in the PICU afterward for at least a couple days, probably longer.

Like I said, we don't know details yet, but here's what I do know:

When the surgeon removes the tumor, he will try to keep it fully intact (less the biopsy from a few weeks ago) and to take a thin layer of liver tissue with it. It then goes to a pathologist.

The pathologist will then look at every square mm of the tumor, hoping to see nothing but liver cells. If there are any tumor cells, that means there are still cancer cells left.

Even if the pathologist sees 100% liver, Andy will still get 2 more chemo cycles after surgery. So we're not out of the woods yet in terms of hearing loss.

So now that I know that Andy has 7 days, 15 hours, and 20 minutes until surgery, I'm suddenly nervous. Will they get enough of the tumor? How long will recovery take? Will he recover? *sigh*

That's the update, folks. Hold the calls for the rest of the evening if you please.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Danny, do you know why they've elected to do surgery and not do the 4th round of chemo?

andrew 4 life said...

Read the post again. Too much hearing loss = straight to surgery.