First post Radiation MRI and First inpatient chemo

Nolan in the sedation room before his first MRI after radiation.   It had been six weeks since having his port accessed and he was really nervous. " Casper"( Nolan's favorite therapy dog) came in the room with him and was able to calm him down.  


After 30 days of radiation and 35 doses of chemo Nolan's MRI showed a 75% reduction of cancer.  I think everything was just now soaking in.  I went through shock, fear, anger, peace and now what ? When Nolan was diagnosed he had a tumor in his brain the size of a golf ball, two tumors in his spine and a sugar coating  of cancer (also know as  leptomeningeal disease) throughout his spine and brain.  Nolan's prognosis was 60% if he responded well to treatment.  The more I learned about Nolan's cancer, the more I realized just how bad this really was.  Medulloblastoma patients have a better prognosis if cancer is caught before it spreads and main tumor is fully removed.  He also got the dreadful pathology of it being Anaplastic.  The Anaplastic type is harder to treat and sometimes spreads more rapidly.   We never lost hope that Nolan could beat this!  Nolan is a fighter!

This picture was taken during Nolan's 1st round of inpatient chemo.  The first round of chemo is the only one I considered a good one.  Nolan always got some sort of complication after every round of chemo :(  This is the famous "I love my oncologist" t-shirt.  It got a lot of laughs!  You can see his face is still swollen from the steroids and he has his  puke bucket sitting right beside him :)  Nolan would get a 6 hour infusion of a chemo called cisplatin, a 1 hour infusion of a chemo called cytoxan and a push of vincristine.  All of them had to be flushed out with heavy IV fluids.  They basically put this poison  in him and had to flush it out before it could cause any damage.  Really? seriously? Do we have to do this? ugh!

How I dreamed of seeing this again!  This picture was taken of Nolan before diagnosis.  He loved to climb trees, skateboard and do tricks with his bike.  This child was fearless and loved to seek danger.  I'm not sure I missed the danger part but seeing him unable to do all that he loved broke my heart.  He still to this day can no longer skateboard or climb trees but has had major improvement and is able to walk again and for that I'm so very thankful!