I forgot to write that yesterday 26th May at 11:36 was my "20 millionth minute" birthday :)
My next odd birthday will be on the 15th September at 14:16, when I will celebrate my 2000th week :)
Calculate your own odd birthdays at:
http://oddbirthdays.com/default.aspx
Wednesday 27 May 2009
Monday 25 May 2009
First day of chemo
We couldn't wait any longer, this morning Helen got her first chemo-therapy treatment, two drugs called Epotoside and Carboplatin. She will get two more treatments, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and after that we wait for 3 1/2 weeks before the next round.
These drugs are very powerful, they damage all cells that grow fast (like cancer cells, but also some healthy cells), but the healthy cells recover much better than the cancer cells.
So these drugs can travel from the blood to the brain, which means that they also can travel from the blood through the placenta to the womb and this is why normally they are only given to pregnant women when there is no other alternative.
Our oncologist could only find 11 cases globally where pregnant women had been given these drugs, so there is very little experience of this. In most of the cases everything went without problems, but in a few cases the baby fell ill and had to be delivered urgently. So of course we will monitor Helen very closely.
But even if we are nervous, the overall mood is positive, there is after all a good chance that this will end well.
These drugs are very powerful, they damage all cells that grow fast (like cancer cells, but also some healthy cells), but the healthy cells recover much better than the cancer cells.
So these drugs can travel from the blood to the brain, which means that they also can travel from the blood through the placenta to the womb and this is why normally they are only given to pregnant women when there is no other alternative.
Our oncologist could only find 11 cases globally where pregnant women had been given these drugs, so there is very little experience of this. In most of the cases everything went without problems, but in a few cases the baby fell ill and had to be delivered urgently. So of course we will monitor Helen very closely.
But even if we are nervous, the overall mood is positive, there is after all a good chance that this will end well.
Tuesday 19 May 2009
Bad news again
I haven't written here in three months now, it has been busy, first with my mother visiting here in Durban, and then with us spending a month in Europe.
When we came back home to South Africa we had an ultrasound scan of Casper, and he is doing very well, very strong and kicking a lot :)
But Helen mentioned to our gyneacologist that she experienced some blurred vision and that she had some loss of strength in her left hand. He referred her to a neurologist who sent her for an MRI.
This MRI showed that the brain tumour that Helen had surgery and treatment for seven years ago, has now come back and she has two tumours in the lower back of her brain. They are fairly sure that it is the same type of tumour that she had previously, it is a relatively rare, malign type called desmoplastic medulloblastoma.
This scan (which can be seen here http://scans.untangledweb.co.za/) was on the 7th of May, and since then we have been speaking to our doctors about how to proceed. If Helen hadn't been pregnant they would have operated her they day after the MRI, and then given her radiation and chemo-therapy.
But all these things have risks for the baby, radiation is out of the question, chemo-therapy can create many problems, and surgery means a high risk of early labor (since she would have to lie on her stomach when they go into the back of her head), and since the baby is only 25 weeks gone now it would be very risky to have him born now.
If possible we would like to wait and do nothing, and have the baby delivered maybe in the 28-30th week, and then let them treat Helen aggressively.
But Helen is getting more and more symptoms; tiredness, dizzyness, vomiting, etc, so we can probably not wait that long. She is taking steroids that reduce the swelling around the tumours and they help somewhat. We will have another big conference with our doctors tomorrow, and there will probably be another MRI-scan later this week, and based on that we will decide what to do next, but it looks now like it would be chemo-therapy.
Before we had spoken to the doctors I was very shaken when I suddenly realised how much was at risk here; my wife, baby and all the plans we have made for our lives for the coming years.
But the doctors are optimistic and seem to think that it is very possible to find a way out of this that saves both Helen and the baby. So until the facts tell us otherwise, that is what I believe too.
When we came back home to South Africa we had an ultrasound scan of Casper, and he is doing very well, very strong and kicking a lot :)
But Helen mentioned to our gyneacologist that she experienced some blurred vision and that she had some loss of strength in her left hand. He referred her to a neurologist who sent her for an MRI.
This MRI showed that the brain tumour that Helen had surgery and treatment for seven years ago, has now come back and she has two tumours in the lower back of her brain. They are fairly sure that it is the same type of tumour that she had previously, it is a relatively rare, malign type called desmoplastic medulloblastoma.
This scan (which can be seen here http://scans.untangledweb.co.za/) was on the 7th of May, and since then we have been speaking to our doctors about how to proceed. If Helen hadn't been pregnant they would have operated her they day after the MRI, and then given her radiation and chemo-therapy.
But all these things have risks for the baby, radiation is out of the question, chemo-therapy can create many problems, and surgery means a high risk of early labor (since she would have to lie on her stomach when they go into the back of her head), and since the baby is only 25 weeks gone now it would be very risky to have him born now.
If possible we would like to wait and do nothing, and have the baby delivered maybe in the 28-30th week, and then let them treat Helen aggressively.
But Helen is getting more and more symptoms; tiredness, dizzyness, vomiting, etc, so we can probably not wait that long. She is taking steroids that reduce the swelling around the tumours and they help somewhat. We will have another big conference with our doctors tomorrow, and there will probably be another MRI-scan later this week, and based on that we will decide what to do next, but it looks now like it would be chemo-therapy.
Before we had spoken to the doctors I was very shaken when I suddenly realised how much was at risk here; my wife, baby and all the plans we have made for our lives for the coming years.
But the doctors are optimistic and seem to think that it is very possible to find a way out of this that saves both Helen and the baby. So until the facts tell us otherwise, that is what I believe too.
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