This past Friday Cody had another set of scans that looked very good! There was no tumor growth, but there was some evidence that the chemotherapy seems to be working. While the chemo won't shrink or completely remove the tumor, it does appear to have killed some of the tumor cells. This, paired with his shunt tap results, tell us the tumor is dormant and they expect Cody to be able to have a (hopefully) nice long break before reoccurance happens. Unfortunately with brain tumors this aggressive, Cody will never be truly "cancer free" and while he will have reoccurance down the road, we are hoping all his treatment over the last year and a half is enough to give him a long time before the next reoccurance. It's also good that this chemo medication has seemed to work very well, so when reoccurance does happen, they will give him another six rounds of the same medication.

Cody's blood work was all over the place, but surprisingly his platelet count was back to normal. While his labs were still chaotic, his oncologist believes they are trending back towards normal levels. They do want him to do at least one more blood draw this week to confirm this, but once he has sufficiently bounced back, he won't have to do weekly blood draws for a while! His poor arms always seem to have bruises because of all of this lab work.

As exiciting as this news is, Cody will still be doing MRI's and oncology visits every 6-8 weeks for the forseeable future. This is to keep track of any changes and if they start to see reoccurance happening, they can jump quickly and act. As excited as Cody was hearing all of this, is crowning achievement of the day was having near-textbook blood pressure! He has struggled with high blood pressure for about as long as I've known him and Friday's reading showed that his blood pressure seems to be stabling without medication. Cody was so happy about the days results he practically skipped to the car!