Vince Is Doing Great

Many of you keep asking me how Vince is doing.  The short answer is that Vince is doing great, but I'll try to expand...

Vince has been doing wonderfully.  If it wasn't for the MRI, we would never know that the tumor had grown back. 

Vince's speech issues have improved by leaps and bounds.  As I had mentioned in the last blogpost on here, Vince has really turned a corner on his speech since March.  He speaks in longer sentences all the time.  He is more understandable, both in the words he uses to describe things and his actual articulation.  He is doing awesome in his speech, although he still is not at the level he should be.

Vince is finally daytime potty trained.  If you know Vince, you know he is almost four and that he still wasn't potty trained.  He is now an expert.  He keeps himself dry and clean.  He does wear a pullup at night and does actually need it, but I'll take one diaper per day over a bunch.  How did I train this stubborn boy, you may ask.  We went online to Target and The Childrens Place and I pulled up the boys underwear pages.  I told him he could pick out whatever underwear he wanted and that the maillady would bring them.  He settled on Thomas the Train underwear from Target.  He anticipated their arrival, asking every day if they had come.  When they finally arrived, he put them on.  He had a few accidents the first few days but has now gotten the hang of it.  I didn't think his other plain white or football underwear were too bad, but apparently he did. 

Vince is in the 97th percentile for height and weight.  I just took him to the doctor yesterday for his four year old well baby visit.  He is in the 97th percentile for height and weight.  Some of his pants are too short and his shoes are getting snug.  He is growing and he has the build of a football player. He eats everything and weighs more than his big sister.

Tomorrow is his 4th birthday.  He's been talking about eating cake on his birthday for months, even telling strangers.  After I post this, Vince and I are baking a cake.  We'll celebrate his life and St. Vincent de Paul.  Tomorrow is also Vince's Name Day, the Feast of St. Vincent de Paul.  St. Vincent de Paul, pray for Vince!

Earlier this month....

Round Two

Vince had a followup MRI Monday.  The tumor has returned.  It's about the size of a grape.  He'll be having neurosurgery again soon (7/27), followed by chemo.  (I can't believe I'm typing these words, that I've had to return to this blog.)

I'm going to try to answer some questions you may have, in no particular order...

1. Weren't his followups good? Yes.  After the June 2014 followup MRI, Vince had another one in December 2014.  The results of that one were ambiguous.  They weren't sure of it was scar tissue or new tumor. There was nothing to do but wait and pray, do another MRI three months later and compare.  March's MRI was good.  They said it was scar tissue.  This tumor is a new development.

2.  What are the risks of surgery again?  He has the same risks as before, chiefly speech issues (since this is in the area of the brain that controls speech) and motor issues on the right side.  He did not have any regression last time with these, but these are the risks of the surgery.

3. Is the brain tumor in the same spot? Yes.  It is in the left frontal lobe, the area of the brain that controls speech. Is it smaller? Yes.  It's a grape now and it was a golf ball before.

4. Will he receive radiation? No, just chemo is what the oncologists have told us.

5. Is it cancerous?  Why are they planning chemo? Cancerous is a subjective term.  His last tumor was a pilomixoid astrocytoma.  It was a phase two tumor and usually phase one & two are considered non-cancerous while phases three and four are.  They had given it a 5% chance of growing back.  They believe this tumor to be the same type as the other, but they won't know for sure until they do the pathology.  The World Heath Organization considers all brain tumors cancerous because they wreak so much havoc, no matter what.  Chemo is necessary this time to get rid of it because surgery alone didn't work last time.

6.  What is the general plan?

• Vince is having his brain tumor removed on July 27th.  He'll be in the hospital for five to seven days afterwards. 
• After he is healed enough to go home from the actual surgery, he'll be evaluated to see if he needs rehab (they call it something else for little kids, intensive in-patient therapy, maybe).  If he needs rehab, he'll receive that also at Children's Hospital as an inpatient.  This could be speech therapy and/or physical therapy, and this depends on if the brain surgery has affected him these ways or not.  (Pray that it doesn't.)
• One they remove the tumor and run a pathology report on it, it will be time for chemo.  We won't know the details of the chemo plan until they know what they are dealing with, that is, have the pathology report (which they cannot do until after removal). 

7.   Had Vince been showing any outwards signs of this?  No.
In the past three months when this tumor grew, Vince had been making rapid gains in his speech.  Kevin and I were amazed, actually.  It seemed every day almost he was saying more and more words that he didn't say before, longer sentences, telling more stories, etc.  Everything was clicking for him, really since March. I had been saying (I'm not a neurosurgeon of course) that it took his brain a whole year to heal, as it was exactly a year after the first tumor removal in his left frontal lobe (the speech area of the brain) to really get his speech going.  Prior to a year post surgery, Vince had been making some speech gains, but he had been chugging along slowly.  From March 2015 until now, he's just amazed me, although he still has a way to go to be up to proper speech for his age. 

8.  How old is Vince now?  He'll be four before surgery, on the Feast Day of St. Vincent de Paul on the old calendar.  St. Vincent de Paul, pray for us!