New Plan

We left the house this morning to arrive once again at Children's around 8 am.  First thing on the agenda was another biopsy.  While recovering from the anesthesia Jordon's doctors wanted to meet with me and Kenny to discuss the new plan and to give us a chance to ask some questions.

Biopsy using CT scan to guide the needle.

Assuming the biopsy shows what they expect they will begin to treat Jordon with a chemo regimen called BEAM.  After the BEAM chemotherapy they will do a bone marrow transplant with Jordon's own cells.  They indicated that there are risk involved but the risk are lower than that of using a donors cells.

They feel as though this is Jordon's best chance to be cured.  They explained in more detail why the previous chemo did not work and what they must do next.  The chemo that they used for Jordon over the last several months was used to put him into remission.  Since the cancer/tumor is still there this means that not all of the cancer cells responded to the chemo that was used.  They assume these cancer cells are smarter or resistant to certain chemotherapy.  Kind of like a staph infection that is resistant to certain antibiotics and it becomes MRSA, the cancer still in Jordon's body needs to be fought differently.  The doctors said this happens in 5-10% of cases and their best option becomes a autologous bone marrow transplant.  This will require high dose intense chemotherapy and admission into the bone marrow unit for several weeks.  The bone marrow unit is negative pressure rooms that are especially designed for those with no immune systems at risk for infection.  Jordon will not be able to leave that room until his immune system recovers.  This generally takes several weeks.  For now we are back home (we anticipated a maintenance chemo stay for a few days).  They will call us after the biopsy results come back (3-5 days) to let us know when Jordon will start the "next round".  If Jordon was in remission they would have started him on maintenance.  But since you don't want to "maintain" cancer, and he still has cancer in his body they must go with another option to get him to the maintenance stage.

So we were thrown for a bit of a loop, but we are very thankful that the doctors have the knowledge and wisdom to treat something so stubborn.  Jordon is so tough, I guess it's only natural that anything in Jordon's body be so tough also.  Let's pray Jordon's will and good cells are stronger than the cancer.

Again our prayers are for remission and for Jordon to be cured.  Please pray for Jordon's continued strength as he goes through even tougher chemo and procedures in the next couple of months.  Please pray against short and long term side effects.  We also ask that you pray that the doctors will be given the wisdom and knowledge to treat Jordon so that he will be cured while escaping life threatening side effects.  We certainly praise the Lord for getting us through today and giving the doctors medical knowledge and options to treat Jordon.  We also praise the Lord that the tumor has shrunk and some of the cancer responded to treatment.

Over the last few months we have seen others go through some tough things, all different, some expected, and some unmentionably sad.  We feel very fortunate to have had a child that does as well as Jordon with something so terrible and cruel as cancer.