It’s Friday afternoon, and we are all enjoying an unexpected snow day with a late season snow storm.
It has been quite a week for us. On Monday, we took Hannah down to Sloan Kettering for her monthly check-up. Unfortunately, a new tumor has shown up in her left lung (lower lobe). The tumor is still small, it did not show up on an x-ray last month, which doesn’t necessarily mean it was not there.
Hannah is unable to have any more chemo in the conventional way, because her heart is not able to take the strain this would put on her body. We were given two options for dealing with this latest challenge. Her two choices are to have surgery immediately, removing the tumor, and then continuing to monitor if any more tumors appearing, or her second choice would be to qualify for a clinical trial in which the chemo would be inhaled instead of given through the bloodstream. The benefits of receiving chemo in this way is that the chemo would hopefully only be directed to the lungs instead of going into her bloodstream. Focusing on the lungs is a positive feature since this is where the last two relapes have occurred. This test method would potentially protect her heart, her hearing, and negate the necessity of transfusions. The chemo that will be inhaled is one that she had during her first treatment in 2003, which unfortunately did lead to hearing loss.
We, of course, decided that the Clinical Trial would be the best option for Hannah, and we spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at Sloan going through a series of tests to see if she qualified for the trial. As of Wednesday night it looked like everything was a go. We were pleased that she has this opportunity vs just surgery alone. However, we got a call on Thursday morning that one of the tests showed a blockage in her lung, which would knock her out of the trial. The Doctors asked that she come down for additional testing, spur of the moment, to see if she could be qualified back into the trial. We sweated out the additional tests on Thursday, they were successful, and she is once again cleared to start the inhalation portion of the trial next Thursday.
The way this trial works is that she will go to Sloan for the inhalation treatment every other Thursday, returning on Fridays for evaluative bloodwork. After the second treatment on April 5th, she will have lung surgery to remove the tumor on April 6. After a quick recovery time, she will resume the inhalation treatments and will continue them for one year. She will have an additional surgery on her right lung, probably within a couple of months from now, to check and make sure that her right lung is clean.
This has been a very emotional, stressful week for the whole family. It is made easier because of the incredible support and prayers we get from family, friends, church, community and even strangers. Hannah is such an incredible young woman and we are very proud of her. We are also so proud of Nathan, Colin and Austin for the support and compassion that they continue to show as we fight this disease together. Please keep Hannah and our famiy in your prayers.