Playing "Soccer" on the Weeekend

video a video by Troy and Karla Gould on Flickr.

Liam has some mild Posterior Fossa Syndrome from his surgeries, but overall we are incredibly lucky at how well he has done. Liam's tumour was in the cerebellum, in the posterior fossa area of the brain, surgery here can cause problems with motor skills (many kids end up unable to walk, some unable to speak). Liam has some shaking in his hands, but is doing really well with his fine motor skills, through doing lots of small Lego activities, stickers and colouring.

Physio encourages us not to let Liam live in a bubble, as kids will fall! The way for his motor skills to improve is doing what kids do, running, jumping, climbing, etc, especially on uneven surfaces like grass.

Seeing Liam run around the yard is just so wonderful to see.

In Recovery from Surgery

Nothing like a last minute Friday afternoon surgery just to make sure we're all completely exhausted.

Liam is back in his room now, having a nap. He woke up from anesthetic quite upset, but generally likes a nap after he gets anesthetic.

I expect this talk of central lines doesn't make sense to most people, just be glad if you never have to know about one. If you want to see some pictures and details, google "Broviac".

Liam got a smaller central line this time, because he's done some of the procedures that required a bigger one. As much as I dislike the central line, it prevents Liam from getting pokes multiple times a week, so it is a necessary evil. The central line is used for IV fluids, blood transfusions, chemo, antibiotics, etc, as well as taking blood for blood tests.

Let's hope we have better luck with this one.

Surgery Tuesday

We met with Liam’s neurosurgeon who did the full resection of the tumour initially. Discussing surgery brought back difficult feelings of how hard the news was in the first place, and going through the surgery with so many unknowns, everything new to us. I asked the neurosurgeon if I was mistaken that the tumour was 4.5 cm, she replied “at least that”. Hard to believe, she showed us the original MRI again, Grade 4 of 4 Medulloblastoma right there written on the pathology report. 

The new "lesion" (cyst) is in the tumour bed of the original tumour, which was in the cerebellum, at the back of the head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebellum 

We had our appointment with the neurosurgeon, then we called our oncologist to talk with her again. I’m so thankful that they both were willing to spend so much time with us yesterday to talk to us.

Here we go again. Liam will go into surgery Tuesday morning to remove the 5 mm lesion and get a biopsy to find out what it is. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait a week before we get the pathology.

I won’t likely post again this weekend as we will be busy having fun!