On July 29th, our world was once again turned upside down as we received life shattering news: Jeremy had cancer. We had just finished breakfast and were enjoying the morning when the phone rang. I looked at it and saw BC Children's on the call display. I thought our doctor was calling about another follow up appointment. I answered and immediately knew something was wrong. Our usually cheerful doctor's voice now sounded somber and heavy, he had news for me and it wasn't good. He said the pathology report on the mass that was removed a month earlier had come back. I leaned on the counter for support as he told me that Jeremy had what was called "infantile fibrosarcoma". Sarcoma. I knew that was cancer. My mind went fuzzy as I tried to grasp the meaning of the rest. How was it possible that Jeremy had cancer? Hadn't he been through enough already? When was he going to get a break? He was still so tiny! I heard the doctor saying that the oncology team would be calling us to discuss treatment. Our doctor apologized, saying that he felt horrible phoning on such circumstances and that he was unable to explain things properly to us as this was not his area of expertise. He was optimistic and hopeful that the cancer was removed with the surgery.
A few hours later we found ourselves again, back at the hospital, dealing with yet another diagnosis. We had spoken to an oncology fellow that I knew well from working with him on my unit as a resident. He reiterated what the surgeon had said, that Jeremy had fibrosarcoma. It sounded a lot scarier than it was he said, because he figured that the cancer was localized under Jeremy's arm and was incidentally removed with the surgery. The only question was, "did they remove all of the tumor?". The only way to know would be by doing an MRI. The oncologist didn't want to jump ahead and do anything quite yet. He explained that the way oncology works at Children's is that all of the doctors convene on Thursdays for a tumor board meeting. The cases are discussed and they come up with a plan together that day. I asked if we could come in and see the oncologist so I could talk to him face-to-face and hopefully make sense of all this overwhelming news. It was also a Friday and I didn't want to wait until the weekend was over to have this discussed properly. Once at the hospital, the oncologist did an assessment of Jeremy and calmly explained that although we didn't have a plan yet, Jeremy's case would be followed closely. He also explained what infantile fibrosarcoma was. It is a tumor that develops from fibroblasts (cells that produce connective tissue) so it tends to occur in soft tissue or areas surrounding bone. The prognosis is good, and when diagnosed in infants, the prognosis is excellent.
The oncologist suggested we go home and try to not to let this overwhelm us too much. He stressed that nothing would change over the weekend and that first thing Monday morning a plan would start to be developed. We were expecting to come back the following week for an MRI and we would go from there.
Brent and I went home with heavy hearts and plenty on our minds. Whatever was going on with our little baby, it was always one step ahead. Each time we made one step forward, we took two steps back.
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