I’m at the hospital with C & S right now. S is resting well, completely unaware that anything is wrong.
C gave me a little more info, so I thought I’d update here, for anyone who may be interested in knowing. Right now, we don’t know what stage the cancer is in. It is definitely a hepatoblastoma, which is a cancer of the liver.
Here’s a brief synopsis of what the “stages” are:
What are the different stages of childhood liver cancer?
Staging is the process of determining whether cancer has spread and, if so, how far. There are various staging symptoms that are used for hepatoblastoma. Always consult your child’s physician for information on staging. One method of staging hepatoblastoma is the following:
- stage I - usually a tumor that can be completely removed with surgery.
- stage II - usually a tumor that can mostly be removed by surgery but very small amounts of the cancer are left in the liver.
- stage III - usually a tumor that cannot be completely removed and the cancer cells are found in the lymph nodes.
- stage IV - cancer that has spread (metastasized) to other parts of the body
recurrent - the disease has returned after it has been treated. It may come back in the liver or in another part of the body.
Stage I, obviously, is what we are praying S has … it would mean that the surgery (Sunday or Monday, if all continues to go well) could put an end to ALL of this. We’d still have to have her monitored, of course …but she may not need chemotherapy (which is rough on adults, so you can imagine what it’ll be like for an infant!).
As of now, the mass is 5 centimeters. That is, roughly, the size of a golf ball.
The levels I mentioned in my last post, by the way, were “AFP,” or Alpha-fetaprotein levels.
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. We are very grateful to have such a wonderful, extended circle of family and friends.
xoxo