Brief update on Madi

NOTE: You can now click on "Subscribe" above to have new posts automatically emailed to you.

This is Kurt posting today, as we wanted to share a quick update on Madi. After 6 weeks of doctor-free summertime bliss, Madi went back to MGH yesterday for a series of imaging tests, to see if any of the cancer has come back since the second surgery and radiation. By way of background, one author called Glioblastoma "The Emperor of all Cancers" because it is so sophisticated, tough to beat, and almost always recurs, so the doctors have to continually monitor it. But of course we've been holding out hope that Madi would be an exception.

She had three different tests yesterday- A brain MRI, a spinal MRI, and an MR Spectroscopy, a test that can be used to determine how malignant a tumor is. They did one of these after her last surgery.

Unfortunately the tests yesterday did find two new tumor nodules that weren't there three months ago (but adjacent to where the tumor was removed surgically). These could have happened in one of two ways, but it's impossible to say which of these is the case for Madi. First, they could have started growing after the surgery, but before radiation started. If that's the case, they would have been hit by lots of radiation and therefore may be dying. So that's the positive scenario. Second, they could have started growing / progressing during radiation, or since the end of radiation six weeks ago, which would be more troubling.

Since there is no way to know which of these is the case, it doesn't make any sense to attempt another surgery right now. This newer tumor may already be on the way out, knocked out by the radiation. So we're going to proceed today with immunotherapy (combined with Avastin) as the third leg of her treatment. The doctors will monitor her symptoms and then do another series of MRIs in a few months to see if it is growing or shrinking. In the meantime she'll head to MGH once every 3 weeks for medication, but will also head back to school next week. Hopefully the side effects from the immunotherapy will be relatively mild so that she can keep a pretty normal routine for the next little while. Thanks as always for your interest, support, and prayers.