The Hanway Family

We heard back from the tumor board regarding their recommendations for Abby. They recommended surgery to remove her tumor rather than a biopsy. This will be major surgery requiring a craniotomy as part of her tumor is wrapped around her carotid artery and pressing on the collection of veins that drain all the blood from her brain (cavernous sinus). Thankfully she won't need all the reconstruction that she had after her last resection, though the rest of the surgery will be very similar. We don't yet have a date for surgery because of coordinating with a neurosurgeon from UAMS, her ENT, and possibly a microvascular surgeon from UAMS, but if it is more than a couple of weeks, she will have another round of chemo before surgery. She will also need more chemo after surgery but the length and type depend on what the pathology show. She has an MRI scheduled for Friday and that will help neurosurgery plan out their portion of the surgery.

Abby's been feeling great and even had a little bit of hair grow in.  It's starting to fall out again, but she was so proud of it.  She kept rubbing her head and pretending to blow dry it.

I have to share a funny story from the girls that happened yesterday.  Alexis ate Abby's cupcake that was sitting on the table.  When Abby discovered this, she told Alexis that she was going to call the police, then got out her pretend phone and told them what Alexis had done.  Poor Alexis was beside herself thinking that the police were going to come get her.  It was so sad and so funny at the same time.  I don't know where Abby came up with the idea of calling the police.  We've never mentioned the police before, other then mentioning to them that my brother is a cop.

Abby was admitted to the hospital on January 3rd for what was supposed to be her last chemo.  We went in expecting the worst news we could imagine.  Just a few days before Christmas, we found a mass of some sort inside her mouth in her right cheek.  Her oncologist had told us to try not to worry about it, but who wouldn't?  After two weeks, the mass had not changed at all, so we were feeling a little more positive that it had not grown.  After three of the oncologists looked at it, none of them had ever seen anything like it.  They went ahead and ordered a CT because they were still worried about tumor progression.  Abby did awesome and did not require any sedation.  The good news is that the mass in her mouth is not a tumor, it appears to be a very large bruise, probably from biting her cheek one day while she was playing.

The bad news is that the CT showed that her tumor has not shrunk at all since treatment began.  This is very unusual, especially on such powerful chemo.  Her oncologist fears that her tumor is not dead.  Therefore, instead of doing a PET scan to look for tumor activity, she will be having another biopsy.  Her ENT will do the surgery, but we won't know if it will be major surgery or a needle biopsy until after they discuss her case in tumor board next Wednesday.  Tumor board is where the oncologists, neurosurgeons, ENTs and other specialists get together to discuss new diagnoses and difficult cases.  This will be the fourth or fifth time that her case has gone before tumor board.  Unfortunately, tumor removal is not an option at this point because her tumor is wrapped around the carotid artery.

Please pray that the biopsy shows her tumor is completely dead and that Abby recovers from surgery quickly and with no complications.  If the biopsy shows that the tumor is still alive, we will have to explore new treatment options for Abby.  At this point, her only treatment options would probably be clinical trials.