Friday, Febuary 8th, 2008 First entry

I know that there are many people who are following Ricky, many with good thoughts and prayers and I'm hoping this blog will provide a way for me to keep everyone up to date on Rick.
A week ago, we were at Children’s Hospital in Boston for an emergency MRI scan for Rick. Over the last two weeks, he had been feeling like he had the flu or a bad cold. Not surprising since his family all had it and many students were out sick with it as well.

He’s had neutropenia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutropenia for more information) since mid-September from the chemotherapy but hadn’t gotten sick in all that time, so we figured it was just a question of time before he caught something. But he also had the two main symptoms he had when first diagnosed with Stage 4 Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain cancer (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glioblastoma_multiforme for more information), the headaches followed by waves of nausea so we were concerned. Turned out we were right, they found a 5.4 cm tumor located right where they had removed a 6.2 cm tumor in May.

His last MRI, December 1st showed everything stable, and a follow on PET Scan didn’t show anything definitive. The doctors said it had grown this big in just eight weeks, and at the rate it was growing (“impressive” was the medical term they used) it would kill him within two weeks to two months. To say we were heart broken is putting it mildly. After having a frontal lobe craniotomy, seven weeks of radiation, heavy chemotherapy, we were back were we started. There were only two choices, operate or move to “care and comfort”, meaning no further treatment. We went for the operation, the tumor is in a spot they could get at, and in an area of the brain not used for much as far as we can tell. Plus, his first surgery went excellent, with no side effects or diminished abilities of any type. He was doing better in school (third grade, Wampatuck School, Scituate, MA) than ever.

He needed the surgery right away so last Saturday, at 7:30 in the morning, Dr Edward Smith of Children’s lead the team to remove the tumor. Dr Smith is simply amazing, and the confidence I have in him is 110%. I had asked him if he would do the operation if it was his son, and he told me absolutely. That was all I needed to hear.

Surgery went very well, at 12:45 PM, Dr Smith came out and told us he was very happy with the surgery, and Rick was stable. He told us he was as aggressive as he could be to remove everything he could without impacting Rick’s quality of life. Left side weakness was a strong possibility.

Three hours later he was playing with his Nitendo Duel Screen with both hands. We stayed in ICU for the night, had a follow on MRI Monday morning and spent the next two days in room 919 at Children’s.

Okay, so that’s some background, I will add more later, but as of today, Friday, he is doing very well. Appears to be 100% back to his old self.

Doctors will let us know the next steps to keep this from coming back today. His MRI after surgery was very good, but chemotherapy will be required for sure. Most likely no more radiation unless its stereoscopic. No more Temador, and he’s out of the clinical trial we were in as his bone marrow just couldn’t hold up to the drugs. He needs it working to build platelets and white blood cells in order to get more chemo. Too much time went by between the treatments, which at least in my mind, didn’t help keeping this cancer in check.

Thank you for all your support and for your many prayers. I think Ricky is on at least thirty church prayer lists and we’ll take thirty more please!

Bill