Welcome to Nathan's Cancer Journey

This blog is a reposting of Nathan's Caringbridge page which we updated throughout his battle with Neuroblastoma.

Nathan was born on June 16, 2000, diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma on April 1, 2003 and died on July 29, 2007.

I have posted the journal here to make it easier to look up by date and also to be able to easily add pictures to the journal entries.

Some of the pictures go along with the text, but many of the pictures you will see were pictures taken on the same date the journal was added, even if the pictures have nothing to do with the text. In the future I may add additional journal entries to go along with pictures to add more explanation/memories.

I am just getting started posting the years of entries and so this will be incomplete for some time. I hope to eventually also post the guestbook entries by date as a comment on the post.

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Thursday, September 11, 2003 7:10 PM CDT

Susan here

Well it has been a tiring week so far. Today Nathan had an echocardiogram, and EKG, a dentist appointment, a hearing test and a visit to the clinic. All were OK except they needed dental x-rays at the dentist and had to hold him down and force him to do it. That was awful.

At the clinic we got some news that his CT scan showed that there was still some dead tumor in him. His surgeons told Luke they had left no visible chunks of tumor. Nathan's doctor is planning to call them to find out what is going on. There is no chance that it is new growth since it is consistant with what they saw in there before and it is definately calcified (dead). Still we are upset about this and would love some answers. He will be having radiation to that area after transplant that may get rid of it. We may also consult different surgeons depending on what we find out. This does not change the transplant date of Tuesday. The rest of the scans show no other tumors anywhere in his body.

The test to detect minimal cancer cells in his bone marrow is being rerun for a 3rd time. It doesn't appear to have any neuroblastoma but does have some strange looking cells that they are making doubly sure that it isn't cancer. The strange cells may be his bone marrow working hard to create more white cells.

Tomorrow we are off to Denver for the day. We have to be there at 7:15 am and so are dropping Julia off at a friend's house at 5:00. That is how wonderful my friends here are!!!! Nathan has a kindey test and we will meet with lots of specialists.

A piece of good news is that we know where we will be staying. There are apartments for families to reside in after transplant that are right by the hospital. Currently there are several vacancies and so they are letting us move in right away. It will be a 2 bedroom fully furnished apartment. Dinner is provided on Mondays. When we are settled in we will provide contact information.

I am sure there is more I meant to say but I am exhausted from a very long day. We will update this weekend.

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