We had an interesting visit with the doctor at MD Anderson last week. We thought that we would be getting some sort of time table for Rachel's treatment to continue but instead we got the same that we've gotten for the past 15 months- nobody knows what to do with her!! The oncologists here and there have differing opinions about how much chemo she should get and when she should be radiated.In Houston they feel like Rach is doing unbelieveably well and they're not in a hurry to try and radiate or change anything in her treatment. The doc recommended keeping her on the same chemo and risking her getting too much chemo because it gives her brain time to develop. The oncologist here wants to radiate sooner than October when she'll be 3 because she's not comfortable giving more than the recommended dose of chemo and she's afraid Rach could go downhill fast. The problem is that one of the drugs that she takes is so new in children that they don't know how much is too much. Getting too much chemo can damage your blood cells and cause leukemia later in life. We won't know if she's had too much until then. It's a risk but radiating her brain now and not allowing more time for development is also a risk. Either way she's going to have side effects and we have to decide which ones we're more comfortable with. :(
She's completely stumped the doctors because neither of them have seen a child with this type of aggressive cancer do so well for this long. They both believe that it's a miracle she's made it this far, we're pretty sure none of her doctors thought she would. We've been hoping and praying that she could make it to 2 1/2 so that she could be radiated on and now the doctors at MD Anderson are hopeful she could make it safely to 3 with the same chemo. Our plan is to do chemo for 2 months at a time and then evaluate what to do next with every MRI. We still don't know when this will be over but we're comforted to know that she has impressed and stunned the doctors with her progress! :)
