Thursday, December 20, 2012

Pediatric Cancer in the Media

You know how once something affects your life, you seem to see more about it around. That is me with pediatric cancer. Not sure how many people would have caught the Dr Oz show today, they had Marlo Thomas on to discuss St Jude's research hospital, one if the largest pediatric cancer hospitals.

Dr Oz also interviewed a Mom and son, the son had a brain tumour when he was less than 3 years old and he is now doing wonderful. A picture showed the same scar as Liam had, the telltale sign of Medulloblastoma. The mother talked about how St Jude's research gave them the ability to do treatment without doing radiation, due to the impact radiation has on young kids, something we have struggled with immensely. She mentioned the testing that was done at St Jude's that other hospitals didn't do.

I am proud to say that our oncology team is very up to date with the latest research and did this testing as well, Liam had his disease tested for the subtype. Unfortunately for us, Liam's subtype was not the one that had a fairly high success rate with chemotherapy only. Which is why Liam is undergoing radiation therapy at the moment, to give him the best chance of survival.

The other story in the news is a woman in the UK, whose son has Medulloblatoma brain tumour. He had the tumour resected and then she took her son and went into hiding to avoid having to give him radiation. By waiting to treat him, this aggressive disease has already recurred, so he needs another surgery. This has actually now gone to courts and the court has ordered that he gets the surgery. The decisions we have to go through for treatment are horrible for a parent to have to make.

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