We had a long day at CHLA yesterday. Lauren had her quarterly MRI scheduled at 11:30 am, so we needed to be there at 10:30, unfortunately the radiology department was way behind, and Lauren's MRI didn't start until almost 1:15 pm. We thought this would be the easiest MRI yet, since Lauren just had a CT scan on July 11th, but CTs are not very detailed and more significantly, she hasn't had any chemo in over a month!! While Dr. Finlay wasn't that concerned about her being off chemo for so long, it was still very stressful waiting for the results.

Since the radiology department is not moving to the new hospital, which is currently under construction, their department is being remodeled and reconfigured, so there is a lot of construction going on. The normal waiting room/area is closed off, so we have to sit in the main lobby. Hilary thinks that I'm a hypochondriac, but I don't agree, but because of the swine flu paranoia, combined with an immune-weakened daughter, a pregnant wife (swine flu may be more dangerous for pregnant women), a crowded lobby of coughing people, a big fan going at full blast swirling all the germs around the room, I could literally feel the H1N1 virus crawling all over my skin. Not to mention the guy who coughed in my face in McDonald's as he walked by. I hate hospitals.

When Lauren finally woke up and felt well enough to get up, we headed over to the day hospital to meet with Dr. Finlay and to get Lauren's shunt reprogrammed. The shunt in her head, which pumps the brain fluid out of her head and into her stomach, is controlled by magnets. Since the MRI is a huge magnet, it can alter the settings on her shunt, so they always need to verify that it is in the correct settings after each MRI. As we were checking in, we saw Regina and her mom Diana and her dad Nick in the waiting room. Regina is the fiercest warrior I know. She has over 39 tumors (www.diana78.blogspot.com) in her brain, has had numerous brain surgeries and has been battling cancer for over 5 years. Lauren went through the Head Start protocol that Regina went through and she is not only a great inspiration to us, but has given us a lot of hope. Regina just had an MRI the prior day and was meeting with their doctor to go over the results. They had a lot of concerns since Regina hasn’t been hungry, has been sleeping a lot and has had a hard time walking.

After a few minutes, Dr. Finlay and his entourage came into the room. We met his new protégé, Dr. Brown (?). It is a one year rotation, his prior two proteges were Dr. Patel and Dr. Khatawl. The first thing out of Dr. Finlay's mouth was, "the tumor is absolutely stable." What awesome words to hear. He said that since Lauren has been off chemo for so long and that there has been no changes, he theorizes, that if we did a biopsy now, it would show that the tumor is now completely low grade.

Then we discussed Lauren's pancreatitis. He mentioned that one of the chemo drugs, Irinotecan, could be the cause of it. So they don't want to give her anymore until they can rule it out. If they can't rule it out, then we'll have to change her protocol (treatment plan) around a bit. He did mention that there is a bunch of new promising drugs on the market so that is a relief. He also mentioned that the question now is how long do we keep her on chemo? He said that some adult patients stay on chemo for the rest of their lives. That was a bit of a shocker, yet at the same time, I'd be really nervous when the day came when they say she doesn't need any more chemo. I'll be especially nervous if we've gone to a universal health care plan and it's the government that tells us she doesn't need any more chemo, but I won't go there.

We also talked to Dr. Finlay about the swine flu and Lauren going to school. He feels that she needs to go to school and live as normal life as possible. But he also mentioned that if any kids her class gets sick, whe will need to get a dose of Tamiflu. So every time some kids gets a runny nose Lauren needs Tamiflu?? I guess that's not too bad, how often do little kids get a runny nose? I'm being facetious of course. I think we need to clarify this with him.

So it looks like Lauren will be starting kindergarten on Monday. Lauren is sooo excited. All of the doctors in the room are very encouraged by Lauren's eagerness to learn and are very impressed with her coloring and how good her motor skills are considering how large of a tumor she has. Btw: I hate when Dr. Finlay describes Lauren's tumor. He starts sentences like, "For a tumor that large..." Based on his reckoning, I think there is only one other surviving child that has a tumor the size she has. Also, while Lauren pretends she is not listening to us discussing her situation, Lauren did ask Hilary in the bathroom on the way out, "so did my tumor shrink?"

After we left the hospital, we met up with granny, granda and Marissa at Taps to have our traditional lobster and steak dinner. We had to go to Taps since the Black Angus in our area closed. We also celebrated my and granda's birthday (which is today). Around this time I checked Facebook and noticed Diana's Facebook update. Regina's tumor, in her words, grew a lot. According to her Facebook entry, their option -- to take her home and make her comfortable. The parallel of two families in similar situations -- one is celebrating while another one just got the worst news of their lives. It's easy for us and people to say, don't stop fighting, but you have to consider quality of life. I don't know what we'd do and I don't ever want to know. All I know is we cried for them and our hearts go out to Regina, Diana, and family. We did continue our celebratory dinner, we need celebrate when we can and appreciate everything we have while we have it.