Please pray for baby Leo. He has retinoblastoma, and had the affected eye removed several weeks ago. Now, there has been a very sad update from his mom:
August 05, 2007 at 08:55 PM EDT
As you might know, we have had a horrible turn of events with Leo's retinoblastoma. It was discovered on Wednesday August 1st that he has trilateral RB. This means that an independent tumour has appeared in or close to his pineal gland in his brain.
The tumour is massive, about 6 cm in diameter. It is utterly amazing that Leo has been able to function as well as he has. Up until the proceedures he had on Thursday, he was rolling, laughing and generally being a happy baby. Unfortunately though he has lost his sight in his remaining eye.
Leo had 3 proceedures on Thursday to prepare him for chemotherapy that we feel we have to try starting early next week. Generally chemo is not very effective on brain tumours however they can not operate on the tumor as it is as a result of RB and that would contaminate the area and make reoccurance highly likely. He has had an omaya reservoir place in his brain through which the chemo will be administered right into the CSF (cerebrospinal fluid- the fluid surrounding the brain) in addition to his chest.
We will have to re-evaluate the situation after the first round of chemo which is now scheduled for every 2 days out of 21 days. Also we are still awaiting results to see if his CSF is positive. If it is, then the prognosis is even worse.
We feel such a great amount of dispair as we simply can not imagine how much we would miss our little guy if he was no longer with us. The situation is obviously dire but if it was entirely without hope we would not try chemo.
We are in utter disbelief that his has happened, especially as a simple CT scan which was supposed be done 2 months ago when he was originally diagnosed (but wasn't for a number of unbelivable reasons) could have made such a huge difference. We can only wait and see what the future holds at this point though and make the most of every second we have with our Leo.
August 05, 2007 at 08:55 PM EDT
As you might know, we have had a horrible turn of events with Leo's retinoblastoma. It was discovered on Wednesday August 1st that he has trilateral RB. This means that an independent tumour has appeared in or close to his pineal gland in his brain.
The tumour is massive, about 6 cm in diameter. It is utterly amazing that Leo has been able to function as well as he has. Up until the proceedures he had on Thursday, he was rolling, laughing and generally being a happy baby. Unfortunately though he has lost his sight in his remaining eye.
Leo had 3 proceedures on Thursday to prepare him for chemotherapy that we feel we have to try starting early next week. Generally chemo is not very effective on brain tumours however they can not operate on the tumor as it is as a result of RB and that would contaminate the area and make reoccurance highly likely. He has had an omaya reservoir place in his brain through which the chemo will be administered right into the CSF (cerebrospinal fluid- the fluid surrounding the brain) in addition to his chest.
We will have to re-evaluate the situation after the first round of chemo which is now scheduled for every 2 days out of 21 days. Also we are still awaiting results to see if his CSF is positive. If it is, then the prognosis is even worse.
We feel such a great amount of dispair as we simply can not imagine how much we would miss our little guy if he was no longer with us. The situation is obviously dire but if it was entirely without hope we would not try chemo.
We are in utter disbelief that his has happened, especially as a simple CT scan which was supposed be done 2 months ago when he was originally diagnosed (but wasn't for a number of unbelivable reasons) could have made such a huge difference. We can only wait and see what the future holds at this point though and make the most of every second we have with our Leo.
I will pray for Leo and his family. 
