Fact-Finding

Austin will have an MRI on Thursday afternoon. It took some juggling to get this scheduled because we were initially hoping for a morning slot, since he can’t eat before being sedated. But the next available morning slot was on May 31 and none of us (neither Mark and I, nor Austin’s doctors) were comfortable waiting that long. Turns out he can have clear liquids until noon and, lucky boy, popsicles count as a “clear liquid,” so the snack at school that day is settled and I’m not dreading the slow ticking by of the hours quite as much.

We’ll see his oncologist after the scan and I imagine we’ll have some results to discuss before we leave that day. But it’s important to note that we don’t expect to get either good news or bad news out of Thursday. We simply expect to get more information. I know, now you’re all going, “Whhhhaaaaaattttt??” But here’s the deal: the MRI cannot tell us if what’s inside him is cancer. It also can’t tell us if it’s not cancer. The purpose is solely to get a good, clear image of the “thing,” its size and, especially, its location. We may be able to see if it’s filled with fluid or not (both of which could be Wilms tumor, so that isn’t terribly relevant either). Barring some bizarre turn of events, like if the thing has doubled in size since last Monday (which would obviously be very very bad) or if it has disappeared completely (which would be good, but confusing), we hope to walk away from Thursday with enough information to help us determine what to do next.

If we want to know definitively what the thing is — and, as of this moment at least, we most certainly do — then we have to biopsy it. The MRI will let us know if the radiologist can attempt a needle biopsy instead of having to do a surgical biopsy. If the thing is located in a spot that’s easy to reach with a needle, without having to go through too many other tissues or organs or what-have-you, that will be considered good news. If it’s not reachable, then we’ll have to decide whether we move ahead and do a surgical biopsy, which is the more aggressive approach because it poses many risks to the kidney and his insides, due to the excessive amount of scar tissue they’d have to cut through to get there. Or if we take the dramatically less aggressive approach and “watch and wait,” by doing repeat scans more frequently to monitor the “thing,” without taking any action until it grows or changes.

It’s confusing, I know (as so much of this has been), but the MRI is really just a first step toward what will ultimately be either good news or bad news. Like we’ve done so many times before, this is a take-one-tiny-inch-at-a-time kind of deal. One tiny inch is about all I can handle right now.