Could it be neuroblastoma?

Another day and, once again, I have no phones, Internet, or cable. I am in utter shock. We have made the decision today to give up on Charter. We will be moving to another company.

Thankfully, Dr. Louis knew to call me on my cell phone so I had a great opportunity to talk to her yesterday. As I mentioned previously there is certainly less known than there is unknown. However, I did learn some things that I did not know previously. For starters, in other renditions of the vaccine that where given to kids with other types of cancers they were able to detect the vaccine for up to 10 years. The problem was that they never saw this in solid tumors like neuroblastoma. In fact, it now looks like Sydney may very well be the new long time record holder in solid tumors.

The question is: why?

We speculated for a bit on the phone. While I was correct that the purpose of the EBV was to keep stimulating the cells, we can not rule out the fact that disease (neuroblastoma) could have the same stimulatory effect. In other words, although it was not necessarily the exact sequence of events that was predicted when the vaccine was designed it is certainly a possibility. Furthermore, it is the reaction we would want to see if she had low levels of neuroblastoma in her body. We would want her body producing increasing amounts of these cells that could theoretically identify and kill neuroblastoma. I, of course, think it is incredible scientifically but it makes my stomach turn to think that if this is, in fact, a true hypothesis; then neuroblastoma is swimming around inside Sydney. I don't like that. Or, I only like that if the vaccine is in fact doing it's job and the t-cells are killing the neuroblastoma. I only like this if it is a cure for her - and others.

So, what do we do?

Well, we will be retesting her. We are scheduling a new bloodletting as we speak and I am trying to coordinate a bone marrow aspiration and biopsy at the same time. In my novice, un-medically educated opinion it is time to do that again. - of course, I have already developed some pretty good arguments. I am still waiting to hear back from Dr. Eames. I did not hear back from her quickly so I have to assume that she is away from the office. I will keep you updated as I hear something.

Well, as you can see, a lot of unknowns. Regardless, I am off to another day of purpose.