With Abigail's tumor diagnosis of pilocytic astrocytoma, the doctors had said they wanted to do MRI's every 3 months, at least for now, to keep an eye on it. Her first MRI, to be used as a baseline to compare the future views against, was scheduled for Friday, January 26th.
Andrew stayed home from work that day to watch Halle and Cora since we knew it would take half the day. I was worried about how Abigail would react to being back in the hospital, considering how her post-surgery experience went, but she did great!
She was excited to get more cream on her arms - only two spots this time!
We showed up at the hospital around 7am for a 9am MRI. I was glad it was first thing in the morning so she didn't have to go without food all day.
We hung out and watched shows and played games on my phone until they came to do her IV around 8:45. Despite the numbing cream and the hospital tablet to play games on to distract her while they placed it, Abigail felt it this time and was not happy. But we got it done.
Getting ready to head down!
Sleepy meds (propofol) in at 9:20am and doing their job.
Her MRI started at 9:30 and finished at 10:50. She was super silly and groggy as she was waking up and even asked me, in her drugged state, "Is it morning time? Did I keep my pull-ups dry all night and stay in my bed all night so I can have a treat?" :)
She was rolling around so much as she came to that I had to keep both hands on her so she didn't fall off the bed!
We headed home around 11:30. I didn't know how soon we'd hear from the neurosurgeon on the results so when a couple of weeks had passed, I just figured there was nothing to report. The pediatrician had looked up the MRI results for us the Monday after the scan and told me she saw the word "stable" so I left it at that. When we went back the next week (remember all the ear infections I mentioned in my other post....), she asked if I'd heard from the neurosurgeon yet and when I said, "no", she encouraged me to call him! She said the results said read and said something about some growth? I wish she'd told me earlier! I called the neurosurgeon only to find out that he'd been out of the country and that's why we hadn't heard from him yet, not necessarily because there was nothing to report.
His office called me a couple of days later to say he was back and had viewed her MRI. He was seeing changes he was having a hard time identifying and wanted to confer with the oncologist, hematologist, and a couple other neurosurgeons. They called me back a few days later after all those doctors had met to confirm that they were seeing "subtle changes" that were unexpected and would like to do another MRI. Based on how this next MRI looks, the surgeon would like to discuss with us the possibility of another surgery. Not the uneventful results we were expecting!
At the point of this writing, we're still waiting. We meet with the neurosurgeon on March 12th to discuss the results in more detail, then her next MRI has been scheduled for March 21st. We'll know more at that point, but until then are just trying to not worry too much.
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