Sorry it took so long to actually update but we have been a little tired.  We have had alot of people ask us why we are happy with a stable MRI, don't we just want it to go away!! The answer is yes, yes, yes...we want the tumor to go away, but that is unlikely to happen at this point, so unfortunately stable is the best possible case scenario for us.  

When Jack had his surgery almost a year ago, they were unable to remove the entire tumor so we went into chemo and then radiation with some residual tumor.  Our radiation oncologist has told us that she would not expect the tumor (or enhancement) to disappear from the radiation but that the radiation has hopefully killed all active tumor cells so that what remains could be either dead cells unable to reproduce, scar tissue, just blood product or unfortunately might be tumor.  Having a clean scan would definitely give us peace of mind but since that is not in the cards for us we are just extremely hopeful that our little tumor cells have been obliterated by the high dose of radiation that Jack received.  The only way to know is to simply re-scan every three months and hope it never changes.  It has not changed this round so that is why we say WOO HOO to a stable scan!  

Of course, because there is still an enhancement on our scan we are still doing chemo, just in case.  We are doing a low dose outpatient chemo for an additional six months.  Jack just had his second round and seems to be handling it well.  He did throw up once on our way home and seems a little tired but eating, drinking and playing with Wyatt. 

We have lots of appointments coming up.  Jack is starting speech therapy, getting his teeth cleaned, IV antibiotics, meeting with our neuro- surgeon and also a spinal MRI in early May.  Typically, they only scan the spine every six months instead of three, like the brain, so it was not scheduled this round.  However, because we did not  radiate Jacks spine and his tumor can spread to the spine we requested it every three months.  Our Doctor is accommodating our craziness and letting us scan every three months instead.  They could not add it on last week though so we are doing one in early May.  

Otherwise, all is well and we are taking a deep breath and enjoying the next three months.