Skip to main content

James has Wilms' Tumors (Update 7)

Yesterday James came home from the hospital to continue recovering from his surgery. I love the photo above because it shows what good spirits James is in and what a trooper he is. A few weeks ago, the surgeon operated on James's left lung to remove tumors and this past Friday she operated on his right lung to remove tumors there. The pathology of the left tumors showed all the tumors as dead or scar tissue, meaning that the chemotherapy or the radiation killed the tumors. We are hoping to hear that the tumors removed on the right lung will also be dead, which we will find out sometime in the next week. If all goes well and according to plan, April 10 will be our last cancer day. James's counts in his blood continue to improve now that we have completed chemotherapy appointments, and we are looking forward to soon being able to socialize more normally again. After this milestone, we will have appointments every three months to look for cancer since his cancer and his treatment plan increase the risk of getting cancer again. 

James's hair is starting to grow back in. At the hospital James was pulling on his hair and noticing that pulling on his hair hurt. It was cute to see him learning about what it's like to have hair on his head again.

While David was at the hospital with James for the surgery, I stayed home with Neil and Isaac. Isaac has been enjoying playing the piano and being entertained by his brother Neil. We have also started having sunny days again and brought out the water table to play with in the backyard. 





Another exciting win for us is that James has started having an appetite again. Often chemotherapy and radiation can make food taste bad for an extended period of time, which is why being able to eat through a feeding tube can be so helpful. We found the feeding tube especially helpful for administering medications since taste isn't often a consideration made when they are being developed. Often during this experience James would see food, think it looked tasty, try it, and immediately spit it out because it tasted bad. We joked that he was like the food critic in Ratatouille who shared, "If I don't love it, I don't swallow." (But obviously it's not that James is a picky eater but it's the impact of the chemo and radiation on his taste buds.) 


In the photo above here he is eating a banana with our new au pair from China. 



Our family is looking forward to soon entering the next stage of cancer treatment and having more normalcy in our lives again. 

Love you all,
-Marissa and David

Update: The day after I published this post originally we got a call from James’s doctor that the tumor results showed the tumors were dead and James is cancer free! Yay, we did it!! 

Comments

  1. Sarah StilesMarch 23, 2023 at 6:43 PM

    This makes my heart so happy to hear! Cancer is so hard, but he has always seemed to be in good spirits. What a brave little man😊 I hope he continues to recover and go on many wonderful adventures!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Come visit us in Utah and stay in our Primary Suite

Back in July, David and I looked at homes as we considered moving here to Utah. One feature that was a little bit unique about our home we ended up picking, is that it has two primary bedrooms (one on the main floor and second one upstairs). We thought it would make sense for each of our three boys to have their own rooms upstairs (with us on the main floor), but that meant one of them would get the primary suite, which seemed a little much to us. We decided that our oldest son could have the big bedroom, but told him that he would need to share it when we have guests over. So far the arrangement has been working well.  We were hopeful my parents (who still live in the Seattle area we left) would visit us often as well as my sister and her husband who currently live in Texas. We added a king bed and have been using it to lure our family members into visiting us. We are pleased to share that we've gotten to host them several times. At Christmas we got a little creative with our extr...
Post a Comment
Read more

My sister Torrey's Wedding to Hyrum

A couple weeks ago David and I took a trip just the two of us to Utah for my sister's wedding! Spending time in Utah was very special for me.  We left our three boys back home and our cousin Trevin watched them for us. (While we were gone, Trevin sent "proof of life" photos as well as several photos of their adventures so that we wouldn't worry about our kids.) We stayed with David's sister who recently moved to north Provo area. The evening before my sister's wedding we had a family dinner where we all got to make toasts for Torrey and Hyrum and celebrate them. Torrey told me that my husband's toast for her was one of her favorites.  I got to be there with Torrey and Hyrum in the Payson Utah Temple. I got to see family and catch up with old friends who have since moved to the Utah area. I loved being a part of Torrey's wedding and celebrating her and Hyrum meeting each other and being able to enter this next stage of life together and a married couple...
Post a Comment
Read more

We are Utahn's now!

We've moved to Highland Utah and are enjoying this new chapter of our lives here! We have discovered that Utah has lovely late summer/early falls. The weather is nice out each day and we are finding ourselves spending a lot of time outside. The kids ride bikes and scooters in the front yard in our cul-de-sac with the neighborhood kids. Our neighbors are warm and friendly. Now that we live on a flat street, Neil has learned how to ride a bike. We live near a paved bike trail called the Murdock trail that is amazing. We enjoy going to Neil's soccer games as a family. The doorbell rings every day with neighbor kids coming over to play. James was invited to his second-ever friend birthday party. Feel free to comment with what you like about where you live and your favorite things to do outdoors. 
Post a Comment
Read more