One Year Down …

… one to go.

All went well today, except that everything took way longer than expected (I’m amazed that I still somehow expect things to go as scheduled). But Austin was a trooper — it is so much easier to wile away half a day in waiting rooms at this age than when he was a baby.

His chest CT came back clear — no sign of any cancer in his lungs. His abdominal ultrasound remains unchanged, which means that unidentified spot we’ve been watching in his liver for almost a year has not grown or changed in any way, but is still there. It’s tricky because ultrasound doesn’t produce a perfectly clear image and the spot appears only when looking from certain angles but not others (as has been the case since we first noticed it). The radiologist said he highly doubts that it’s anything worth worrying about but would prefer to use an MRI or abdominal CT for a better look.

I discussed this possibility with Austin’s oncologist, because it would first require a repeat GFR to determine if Austin’s kidney can even handle an MRI or CT with contrast. We decided that, while a GFR might give us some comfort regarding his kidney (we haven’t had one since last May and I would love to see a number considerably better than 27), the day-long procedure is difficult to do without a central line because of the number of blood draws and, even if his GFR was high enough to allow further testing, we’d then have to weigh the pros and cons of MRIs versus CTs, and then if we chose one over the other and were actually able to get a better look at this little blob, that still wouldn’t tell us definitively what it was, and then we’d have to decide if it was worth attempting a needle biopsy, which would be extremely difficult because this spot is only one centimeter in diameter and we’re obviously not going to do a surgical biopsy, and then, and then, and then.

In truth, the potential information we could get by doing an MRI or CT isn’t really worth much. Even our oncologist said that doctors just like more information for the sake of information: “We want to know everything we can know.” And, “The radiologist is an image guy so he wants better images.” Needless to say, we decided to leave this little thing alone until there’s reason to worry about it.

His labs also came back good — creatinine its same steady low and CBC numbers all in safe ranges.

Numbers and medical jargon aside, all you really need to know is that we have made it one year cancer-free. Dr. Auletta said that 80% of Wilms tumor relapses occur within 18 months of stopping treatment. (That does not mean that 80% of children with Wilms tumor relapse! Just that if they do, it happens within the first 18 months.) So, six months from now, his chances of relapse go down significantly. And six months after that, we are almost free and clear.

The other piece of good news from today is that we learned that Austin is allowed to take Claritin. I know this may sound silly next to discussions of potentially cancerous spots on livers and all, but he has been miserable lately due to his seasonal allergies. Puffy eyes, sniffly nose, constant sneezing. I had always thought he shouldn’t take allergy medicines because they’re filtered through the kidney, but I was happily mistaken.

So as we were walking down the hallway back to the parking garage after nearly six hours at the hospital, Austin skipping along beside me, I said, “Honey, all your tests were good today. We can’t see any cancer in your body.”

He looked up at me and said, “And no more sniffles?”

I guess if that’s his greatest worry, we’re in a pretty good place.