John had his second seizure this year, this time last Thursday evening, as he was preparing to play basketball in Sunnyvale. His friends Lawrence Milan and Chris Zhou were with him and quickly got him emergency care, contacted Melanie and me, and had John in an ambulance down to Good Samaritan hospital in short order.
There he was treated and released after a review and additional anti-seizure medications administered. He was scheduled and received an MRI yesterday, May 5th. Today, the 6th, we reviewed the results with John's lead doctor, Dr. Friedman, at Duke University. The news was a bit hard to take. His tumor has progressed and is causing the seizures. The current chemotherapy regimen of carboplatin and CPT-11 will stop as they are not effective. Dr. Friedman is researching additional therapies to apply and we will have a conference call with him on Thursday to review the next steps.
One of the hardest bits of news was to learn that the anatomical structure of this progression, into a multifocal tumor (i.e. more than one tumor arising from one original tumor), precludes him from utilizing their most cutting edge treatment of injecting the tumor with a re-engineered polio virus. Because there is more than one tumor, multiple catheter insertions would be needed and there is no known safe and effective way to do so.
We remain hopeful that the team will find some course that will arrest the progression. Till then we ask for your thoughts and prayers.
No comments:
Post a Comment