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.

Monday, January 12, 2004

Monday, January 12, 2004 8:35 PM CST

Susan here...

Well - one day of radiation to go and Nathan is still doing wonderfully. We need to pop into the clinic for blood tests tomorrow or Wednesday (because he is on the IV nutrition) and he also starts his neupogen injections Wednesday morning.

It looks like we probably have a corporate flight Thursday afternoon. We don't have to be in New York until Sunday night but we'll take the corporate flight anyway. We are all a little sad about being apart for 2 weeks. We will manage though. I have found a good home daycare for Julia while Luke is working.

We should know about the corporate flight for sure tomorrow.

We are also still awaiting the results of Nathan's blood test to see if he has developed a HAMA..what follows is an explanation of HAMA from The hospital's web site...

What is HAMA?

HAMA stands for "human anti-mouse antibodies." HAMA measures how strongly the body's immune system is reacting to 3F8. 3F8, like most monoclonal antibodies, comes from a mouse white blood cell; this means that 3F8 looks different from a human antibody and a human will form antibodies (HAMA) against 3F8. If a patient has HAMA, there is no point in administering 3F8 treatments because the HAMA will block the 3F8 from getting to neuroblastoma cells. However, HAMA can disappear; when that happens, we can resume 3F8 treatments. We check for HAMA by a blood test. Patients with HAMA do not have pain or other side effects of 3F8 treatment, but patients without side effects sometimes do not have HAMA (and can continue to be treated with 3F8).

Is HAMA good or bad?

HAMA might be a sign that a patient is developing an immune response against the neuroblastoma -- and that is a good thing. It is probably best that a patient receive at least four cycles of 3F8 treatments.

Most patients who have received chemotherapy only a short time before 3F8 treatment do not make HAMA because their immune system is too weak. In Memorial Sloan-Kettering's protocols, our aim is to give repeated treatments with 3F8 until HAMA is made. It appears that the best chances for cure exist when multiple cycles of 3F8 treatment are given and the patient begins to form HAMA. We continue to study HAMA to gain a better understanding of its role.

We do not expect Nathan to have developed a HAMA yet - but if he has we will not go back to New York for treatments next week.

We'll let you know of any developments tomorrow.

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