Friday, September 02, 2005
We met with Paul Fisher today to get the results of tuesday's MRI and they were very hopeful. Though the mass is still there, its "enhancing" has diminished some, meaning it's taking up less blood: an excellent thing. The cyberknife radiation Jacob had in May can continue to work it's magic for up to 12 months, so there's good reason to hope that the thing will keep going away.
Dr. Fisher said that as of now Jacob has had the Cadillac, the "nuclear bomb" (yes, he actually said that), of the treatments available. For now, we just watch and wait. When we talked it over later Young added, "We take this time as a gift."
Recovery from the Stem Cell transplant is a whole separate matter from recovery from the tumor. Jacob's going to have his immune reconstitution test next tuesday. These are the ones that will tell us how far along his immune system has come in it's ability to mount a response to a pathogen. The tests take a week to ten days, so we won't even get a snap shot of how much longer he'll be in isolation/out of school for a couple weeks. Meanwhile, the BMT team definitely nixed the idea of Jacob attending some part of the seventh grade camping trip. It's just too dangerous.
Our neighbor Tammy is a professional photographer and she's offered to give Jacob photography lessons. She has a clearer eye about the school issues than I do. I've been more or less in denial about keeping him home, since even the term "home schooling" gives me the galloping heebee jeebees.
His favorite tutor and Ellie's old roommate, Sabina Piersol, will be tutoring him two days a week as well, to help him keep up with the Nueva curriculum. With Tammy's gentle push, we're beginning to think about other possibilities, like finding a naturalist who could lead explorations around Quarry Park.
Dr. Fisher said that as of now Jacob has had the Cadillac, the "nuclear bomb" (yes, he actually said that), of the treatments available. For now, we just watch and wait. When we talked it over later Young added, "We take this time as a gift."
Recovery from the Stem Cell transplant is a whole separate matter from recovery from the tumor. Jacob's going to have his immune reconstitution test next tuesday. These are the ones that will tell us how far along his immune system has come in it's ability to mount a response to a pathogen. The tests take a week to ten days, so we won't even get a snap shot of how much longer he'll be in isolation/out of school for a couple weeks. Meanwhile, the BMT team definitely nixed the idea of Jacob attending some part of the seventh grade camping trip. It's just too dangerous.
Our neighbor Tammy is a professional photographer and she's offered to give Jacob photography lessons. She has a clearer eye about the school issues than I do. I've been more or less in denial about keeping him home, since even the term "home schooling" gives me the galloping heebee jeebees.
His favorite tutor and Ellie's old roommate, Sabina Piersol, will be tutoring him two days a week as well, to help him keep up with the Nueva curriculum. With Tammy's gentle push, we're beginning to think about other possibilities, like finding a naturalist who could lead explorations around Quarry Park.
# posted by Ann @ 3:44 PM 
