Consultation with Dr. Fisher

We had been dreading today for a week, but of course it was a relief to finally talk to the doctor and have our questions answered. We both feel reassured.

Doctor Fisher told us what we already guessed. Beckett is going to have weekly chemotherapy for 60 weeks or so, with some weeks off. The drugs used in the chemotherapy are carboplatin and vincristine, some of the milder drugs as far as chemotherapy goes. We will bring him to Lucile Packard Hospital at Stanford, which is just over an hour away from us, every week for his treatments.

Even though Beckett's vision doesn't seem to be affected yet (although it's hard to tell, with a two year old), we saw the tumor and it had grown significantly compared to the last MRI. If we had been undecided about whether or not to give him chemo, this would certainly have convinced us, but we were already thinking that treatment was the right choice.

This a totally different kind of tumor from the type that can spread to other parts of your body. So, it's worth repeating that Beckett is not in any mortal danger, even though "brain tumor" sounds really, really bad. If it wasn't for the fact that it is in a very inconvenient location (the optic nerve) and that it had shown this quick growth, we wouldn't be treating it at all.

Apparently, Beckett will be able to do most, if not all, of the things that he normally does. He will be tired on the days when he gets chemo and maybe on the next day, but he should still be his normal self. The side effects should be fairly minimal, but they will be watching his blood counts closely. On days when his white cell counts are low, we might have to be a bit more careful.

A piece of good news is that we will still get to go on our trip to New Jersey and to England as planned. We will return on August 10th and Beckett will get his first treatment on the week of the 13th.

Beckett will get the drugs through a port that will be implanted in his chest. The port doesn't sound as bad as we had thought, either. There won't be anything visible on his skin except for maybe a slight bump; I had been afraid that there would be leads dangling out of him. The port just makes it a lot easier to hook up blood draws and administer the chemo since you don't have to look around for a vein each time. Getting the port is outpatient surgery, and he'll get it on the same day as his first chemo treatment.

Overall, we think we are in very good hands at Lucile Packard and with Dr. Fisher. We aren't looking forward to this, but we know it's the right decision. How hard it will be, we will discover.