The New Plan

Ronan was discharged Friday evening (we were ready to leave in the afternoon, but the sedatives they gave him for removing the two tubes kicked in and he slept for 3 hours)...so the 3 of us stayed in Halifax and arrived home Saturday afternoon. The boy is feeling good - he's up and about and only on children's Tylenol as needed. Remarkable. In Dr. Berman's words, Ronan is "WonderBoy"...we all knew that though :)
On Friday afternoon Dr. Fernadez spoke to us and said that Ronan's case was discussed at their tumor review meeting this past Wednesday evening. They were all very pleased with the results of his surgery, but the spots on his lung were "on their radar". The CT scan that was done a few weeks ago showed that the tumors had decreased even more and so had the spots on his lung. They have never been able to know whether these spots were tumors or scar tissue caused from the abdominal swelling when this all began - and only removal and a biopsy report will tell us for sure. Surgery on his liver was long (9 hours) and complicated (the tumor was stuck to his abdominal wall and to his diaphragm and there was a lot of blood loss/transfusions - 8 units! - and a little over half the liver removed). The surgeon felt that since they were so successful after 9 hours, and all of the tumor mass was removed, they didn't want to put Ronan through more and continue to remove the spots on his lung. So, the new plan is: chemotherapy, surgery on his lung, and then one last round of chemo. And Hawaii? Dr. Fernandez would like us to try and fit that in next week (if we can make it work that quickly) before Ronan's next round of chemo!

xo