July 6th Scott went down to Primary Childrens Hospital for his 3 month interval MRI and checkup. The tumor seems to be pretty much unchanged from the last (depending on who is measuring it). The radiologist always says it grows a little, but to our neurosurgeon it's always within mistake margins and so he writes it off. So even when you compare it to the very first MRI taken back in October, the size hasn't changed much- maybe a milometer bigger if at all. Since Scott's biopsy the tumor has always shown better on MRI and instead of being a big blob, the outline of the tumor shows up really well on picture now.
The biggest question most people ask me is if Scott is still symptomatic and still feeling dizzy. I think it's pretty normal for him. He just carries on with life even being dizzy every day. He definitely avoids running because it worsens when he runs and he has opted out of soccer again for Fall. I know we are suppose to encourage him to be active, but I wouldn't want to run around if it made me dizzy and gave me headaches, so I'm not going to make him do that either. But I think overall, he is just happy there's a reason for the dizzy and that people believe him. He went a long time with coaches and doctors telling him he was just being lazy and making it up. So I think he is happy knowing that we believe him when he says he is dizzy, and that that's okay, and that's his normal. Does that make sense?
So we are very blessed and happy things are staying the way they are and that the tumor is not growing. Since a tumor in theory is cells from your body that didn't stop growing, maybe this tumor has reached it's maturity and is done growing. That would be awesome.
We also got the go ahead to start 6 month intervals now for MRIs and checkups, so that's great news too! The only bad part is that our wonderful neurosurgeon is moving back to Canada for even a bigger job. We gave him a pretty hard time about that. We get to choose who will be taking over and I asked for the other neurosurgeon who has seen the tumor himself. If you remember during surgery the lines of tumor and brain were so unclear that our surgeon called in a second opinion. Well I asked for that guy. A lot of people see the tumor on the MRI and think they are good enough to get it out surgically, but the two who have seen it live in person know that's not the case at all once in there. There's still a lot of the tumor that doesn't show up on the MRI.
He did say they were looking for someone with a lot of research in brain tumor studies and trials, and if they did find someone like that it may be beneficial for us to work with them and do trial studies, etc. But for now we will just watch Scott and if all is well we will just have checkups every 6 months. Life is pretty good considering.
