In Whose Hands?

I’ve gotten a couple of questions over and over lately from some of you who are putting a lot of thought into this issue. My answers, of course, are anything but clear-cut. The first is that we really have no idea how likely this cancer is to return. If we looked only at the study protocol we’ve been following, half of the children had a second recurrence (which, not to confuse you, means a third time). But, like I’ve all too often, Austin doesn’t fit neatly into any of the categories of children in that study.

The main reason is that Austin’s initial tumors, on both sides, had that rare rhabdomyomatous differentiation. This is significant in terms of his future prospects mostly because his initial cancer was resistant to chemo and therefore, the fact that it recurred once doesn’t necessarily mean that it beat chemo — which is what makes recurred cancer so much more deadly in the first place. Think about this: if you treat cancer cells with the deadliest weapon known to doctors (chemo) and instead of being destroyed, they instead go into hiding before sneaking back out again, that means they’re pretty darn tough cancer cells. But if you knew that chemo wouldn’t work on them anyway (or would only work on 20% of them as was the case with Austin), and then they returned, it’s a whole different ball game. The cells didn’t actually beat the chemo, they just didn’t respond to it.

Add to that the fact that his most recent cancer was not rhabdomyomatous at all but instead a regular old Wilms tumor and things get even murkier. Did it morph? Was it maybe smarter than the chemo and it somehow changed over time? Or, because we were watching it so closely and frequently in those months and actually saw it grow over that two week period and then quickly swooped in and removed it, did we just catch it so early that it hadn’t yet had the chance to evolve from a classic Wilms into a rhabdomyomatous Wilms?

I know, blah blah blah, I’m sure I’ve lost a lot of you with that damn “r” word again. The important thing to glean from this is that Austin’s recurrence doesn’t mean the same thing as some other child’s recurrence. Unfortunately, what it does mean remains unknown to all of us. Quite frankly, we don’t know whether his chances are made better or worse thanks to his unique situation.

Which brings us to the other major question I’ve heard and that is, how likely is this cancer to spread if it does return? A very important question because if it never spreads, then taking the kidney out preemptively isn’t even necessary. Why not just roll the dice, hope for the best and then if (if!) some small shadow appears on a scan down the road, we remove the kidney then? If it’s not gonna spread anyway, we just scoop out the whole kidney (“whole kidney”? ha!), tumor and all, and start dialysis then, when we must. One problem with this is that it resets the clock and we then have a full twenty-four months before transplant (as opposed to, say, twenty months if we remove the kidney electively in August). The bigger problem is the danger of the cancer spreading. If we leave the kidney in and cancer returns and then spreads beyond it to Austin’s liver or lungs, then we’re in real trouble. Like, you know, real trouble.

Which brings us back again to the rhabdomyomatous question. That variant is highly UNlikely to spread (and Austin’s certainly never has), whereas classic Wilms is more likely to spread. So, like I just asked, was his most recent cancer really classic Wilms or would it too have morphed into a rhabdomyomatous tumor over time?

I know, your head is hurting now. Imagine how mine feels.

So this brings us back to our current — and ongoing — predicament about what to do next. So many of you have expressed what a terrible position this is for me and Mark to be in, how horrible and unfair it seems to place this sort of responsibility in the hands of parents. And in many ways, I agree: I hate the choice we have in front of us.

But I also believe that we are the best ones to make it. In the absence of clear medical and scientific information, no doctor has the answer right now. They have opinions and recommendations, but they don’t know what the right choice is. And neither does Mark. And neither do I.

But we do know Austin. And we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no matter what we do, we will do it with Austin’s best interests at heart. We are his parents. No one on earth could handle this decision more carefully than we will. No one on earth could care more about its outcome than we do.

So who better to make this decision than us? In whose hands could his fate possibly be more secure than ours?