December 11, 2012

I woke early this morning while everyone was still sleeping. In fact it is 6 am and everyone is still sleeping while I'm sitting here writing this. I am so excited about today, I just couldn't go back to sleep earlier, so I started checking on my "babies". As crazy as it is, I've had a little guilt about being in such a magical place on a wonderful vacation while too many wonderful families are still in the midst of serious battles. Even they would tell me I was being crazy for feeling that way. HOWEVER, that changed a lot this morning.
I know that one of the families I always check on, won a major battle against some of their doctors on Friday...we are talking an ethics committee kind if a battle; unfortunately problems with doctors are far too common. But the biggest, most amazing news came this morning when I saw my friend in NYC's post that her sweet little Matthew-Man had responded to what they thought was his last hope! The doctors told her a few months ago, that there was only one treatment left for them to try. 16 kids had done this experimental treatment and only 2 saw significant change. Well guess what?! Matthew whose boney disease has seen no improvement since his diagnosis last November just saw SIGNIFICANT improvement from this treatment. So much improvement, that MSKCC is going to do another round of this treatment and hopefully will then be able to offer them other options as well. One of the things about cancer is that if the disease is too resistant or showing too much progression, doctors can't offer much; that has been part of Matthew's problem. This treatment just gave Matthew and his family new hope. Congratulations to them, this just makes me so dang happy. This treatment was very very very hard on Matthew so to see this outcome is so awesome!
For those wondering about this treatment, it is called NK cell therapy. It is also being used with leukemia. For neuroblastoma though, they give a round of high dose chemo, the NK cells and then a round of high dose 3f8. The NK cells are cells taken from the parent whose immune system is the exact opposite of the child's. They extract the parent's strongest "fighter" cells (T cells I think) and then give those cells to the child in the hopes those "fighter" cells will fight off the cancer. In this case the "fighter" cells came from Matthews mom. How appropriate. I can tell you that as a mother, sometimes you can feel like you did something wrong when the child you grew in your belly has cancer because of a genetic mutation, so to see your fighter cells do so much for your child, I imagine is one if the greatest gifts you could have.
Anyway, couldn't think of a better start to my day right now as we get ready to head off to the Magic Kingdom.

Go Matthew!