Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 6:07 PM CST

Can you belive the radiologist has still not entered in his report?? Yep, but I will tell you what we know.

Nathan's oncologist looked at the scans online and he is no radiologist but he didn't see any of the "lytic" changes that would indicate cancer causing the pain. He also thinks he may have seen effusion (fluid) by the joint. This can happen sometimes when a child has had a virus and for some reason it travels to the hip joint. This fluid can cause pain (called transient synovitis). He really wants to see if the radiologist sees the fluid since he (onc) is no expert at reading MRIs.

Another piece of good news is that half of Nathan's urine test came back well within the normal range. Usually the two numbers are pretty in tune with eachother so we would not expect the second half to come back elevated either. This is the test that checks for catacholamines in the urine. Catacholamines are produced by active neuroblastoma. Jut because they are normal doesn't mean there is no neuroblastoma there - but it is another good sign.

So - this means Nathan could just have this fluid in his hip. If it is that - the pain really should go away in the next day or two.

The next step is to go ahead and take some bone marrow from Nathan. Unfortunately the office is too busy to do that this week. Hopefully they will do it on Monday.

Nathan's doctor is off the rest of the week but has promised to check for the report from home and call us as soon as the report is in. There really is no excuse for it to not be in yet. That is pretty irritating.

Anyway - keep the thoughts and prayers coming - they may be working!

I will update you when I hear something.