Unfortunately, Indy's chemotherapy stopped working. Her latest scan showed that the tumor coming off the backside of her original relapse tumor, that we hoped had since died and gone dormant, has grown considerably, measuring 6 cm long. Fortunately, it is on top of her brain rather than down in it, so we all agreed that the best thing to do now would be to move on to surgery, which will be sometime next week. Her neurosurgeon has amazing credentials and has been nothing but reassuring and incredibly kind to us since we originally met him last April when we first discovered she had relapsed. He's touched base with us a few times since, and I guess that's why I'm not completely surprised that we've finally arrived here. I think I've known from that point that we would have to use him eventually. As far as I know, none of the children who've survived relapsed PPB Type 3 have avoided having surgery. It just seemed inevitable. 

While he's there removing this new one, he's also going to take out the necrotic old tumor too, so long as he can determine that it will involve no risk to her brain. He thinks it can be done. I'll be glad to get it out of there too. Having to see that dark shadow on all of her scans since last April has been unpleasant. Especially after Indy had her first seizure this summer, and their scans indicated that it had likely come from that tumor. There's something symbolic to me about finally getting it out of there. 

Unfortunately, it's not the only one. There are two other noticeable tumors, but neither are close enough to that one to remove in the same surgery, and both of those would be riskier surgeries. However, they're both smaller than this one and not yet causing any issues, so we all agreed that the best thing to do would be to go to radiation after she's recovered from the surgery to radiate at least those two other tumors. And I'm not surprised we've circled back around to that either. The radiologist told us last year to keep the cage they made for her head somewhere safe, because it was almost inevitable that we would need it again, as that was just the nature of brain cancer. And here we are. 

Hopefully, by the time she's recovered from that, her doctor will have received the results from the biopsy of the tumor we're removing. With any luck, there will be genetic information there that we can use to find a new treatment designed to specifically target whatever these brain tumors are composed of. If they come back with nothing new, I'm not sure what we'll do. 

But her doctor assured us that there were at least a couple more options. 

In light of all of this, we decided to pull Indy out of school. It just wasn't feasible to think that she could keep up with the homework for one, but she would have to miss a lot of the classes, and who knows what the radiation will do to her memory. I've felt relatively numb about a lot of what's happened in the last two weeks, but thinking about having to take her out of Kindergarten pushes me toward the edge. She was enjoying it so much, even just through E-learning. It was the most interaction she's had with kids her own age in a long, long time, and she was so proud of herself learning to write and work math problems. It makes me sick right now, just thinking about it. I told her we're just on vacation for now. 

And then we had Halloween early this past weekend. Lots of games and treat-making. I set up a little treat bag hunt for her in the yard as well, in lieu of traditional Trick-or-Treating. She seemed to truly have a blast. I already had all of our lights set up, because I've been here before. I knew I needed to have it all done before her scan, or it might not get done at all. Lo and behold. Honestly, April and October are basically cursed. The last few years, we inevitably receive terrible news right before my birthday. Then, of course, April is both the month of her diagnosis and her relapse. Anyway, so we've had our official Halloween, though I still have a few treats to make and want to possibly do some more pumpkins this coming weekend. In the meantime, we're doing crafts and trying to stay busy. At least with the holidays coming up, there are easy things to focus on. Not to say it doesn't just creep up on me. 

I was laughing at something my dog did the other night--just genuinely laughing out loud because it was hilarious--and then, suddenly, instead, I was sitting there bawling. I hadn't even been thinking about anything sad. It just hit me. The closer we get to surgery, probably the worse it will get. But honestly, I'm not worried about the surgery really. I am completely confident in her surgeon and her team at Riley. And I'm not worried about radiation. We've done that before. It's going to be waiting on the biopsy results that will antagonize me. I need those results to tell us something we don't yet know about her cancer and how to fight it. I'm scared as heck over the fact that she's undergone some big, bad chemotherapy, and it's still growing. 

I'm hoping that just taking it out will be the end of the story for this one stupid tumor we've been dealing with this whole time, and that it will mark the beginning of her successful battle against cancer and its defeat. Please, let this biopsy give us the answers we need.

But, that's where we stand currently. 

Before I wrap this up though, just as an FYI, because I know there was some confusion, if you see the pop-up on this site to make donations, that's to donate to CaringBridge, which is operated on donations, allowing people like me to use it as a blog space for free. By all means, absolutely donate to them if you want to do so, but some people were confused thinking that it was a donation that went to Indy, which it's not. You can find those links on her Facebook page.