Monday - Gavin is intubated because the tumor was wrapping itself around his esophagus and pushing in on his trachea. It's making it hard for him to breath. (This is what brought him into the ER Saturday night.) He's given an MRI so the surgeon can have a better idea of what she will see when she gets in there. They notice that three nodes in his neck above the tumor are larger than normal. The plan is to remove them also.
Tuesday - They take him at 7:30am. As you can imagine it was not an easy goodbye. They allowed Brooke and Garth to wait in his room in the PICU rather than the official surgery waiting room. Her mother and I joined them as we waited for updates. It was a long few hours but the updates helped. In the end he came out of surgery without any complications. Good news - They were able to remove 99% of the tumor. Bad news - they had to take 27 nodes and the tumor was a lot bigger than the MRI showed. More bad news - based on the color of the tumor there is no doubt that it's a neuroblastoma, a rare form of pediatric cancer.
Post operation - Gavin spent the next eight days recovering from surgery. All this time was spent in the PICU, which was fine with Garth and Brooke. They are both pharmacists and Garth works in the pediatric pharmacy at this hospital. I think it helps a little when you personally know all the nurses that are caring for your child. There is nothing, however, that can make it easier to see your baby hooked up to machines that are breathing for him, seeing blood and fluids drain out of his chest tube and knowing a kiss from mommy is not going to make the ouch away. Gavin did have an amazing priesthood blessing after surgery. This left everyone in the room feeling very positive about the overall outcome of this trial.
After all the biopsys came back the cancer was officially labeled as a stage 2B neuroblastoma. Gavin will have from two to eight rounds of chemo and will not need radiation. As of today he is on his second round.
Gavin has been incredible throughout this whole ordeal. He is too young to understand what is happening to him and because of that he just wants his mommy. She is the only one he wants, which can get difficult at times. He is handling the chemo really well and has not gotten terribly sick because of it. He is, however, starting to lose his hair and that is hard to watch happen.
Life is going on. We all went camping the weekend before chemo started and tried to forget the troubles of life for a while. It worked and we had an amazing time. The kids went back to school. Garth and Brooke both went back to work (Brooke only works every other weekend). The chemo countdown began.
As always we keep Gavin in our daily prayers and take every moment for the blessing that it is.
I LOVE YOU! I don't know what I would do without you now or then. I could write a book about all you have done for me, but instead, I'll say THANK YOU, so very much! Thank you, thank you for being who you are and being there for me.
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