I met Alan's primary oncologist this morning and he gave us a preliminary progress report on the test results. The initial examination of the biopsy showed that the tumour is made up mostly of muscle and connective tissue, falling into the class of small blue round cell tumours. They will run immunostaining tests next to further narrow down the specific type of tumour. This will take another day or so, since they will be sending the slides to several different pathologists to independently determine the type of tumour. Apparently, the differences between the tumours in that class are very subtle, so they want to be sure.
Intellectually, we know that an accurate diagnosis is better than a fast one, but the primal mama and papa bears in us are saying "Kill!"
The more encouraging news is that because of Alan's age, his hip bone is made up mostly of cartilage, so when this tumour is beat, there is a good chance the bone will grow back. The oncology doc will take over all of Alan's health care for now - no more taking him to the primary care pediatrician, pediatric GI, or ER. One stop health care shopping - good thing we both really like him! As he says, "Charge on!" - we're stopping at nothing less than a cure.
No comments:
Post a Comment