Hospital Visit

We checked Nathan into the hospital and he goes in for a biopsy of his liver and to have a port put in his chest so they can more easily administer his chemo medicine. The biopsy will tell us exactly what type of cell started the tumor and our hope is that it’s just liver cells gone crazy. This will also tell us exactly what type of medicine we need to use to shrink it down for surgery. Nathan will have two rounds of chemo that will last 6 weeks, after that time he will be re-evaluated to see how large the tumor is, and if it has shrunk enough he will go in for surgery.

While liver cancer is not a common thing among children, for the children that do get liver cancer his is the most common variant. His liver is functioning normally as well as the other organs around his liver. Often liver cancer will spread to the lungs and his lungs appear to be clear and healthy which is good news. The doctors believe that his cancer is just liver cells based on a protein marker found in his blood.

Normally the liver produces AFP (I think that’s the letters) and the body will have a level of 8 (these numbers are expressed in 1,000’s). His little body has an AFP level of 320,000. At first that seems to be really bad, but his oncologist said that’s actually really good. She would have been much more concerned if the level was down around 100. We think that since the number is so high that means it’s just liver cells.

The cat-scan also revealed that his tumor is calcifying and necrotic in the center, which means that it’s dying. The oncologist told us that it grew so fast (it wasn’t there 6mo ago) that it outgrew its blood supply. Slower growing tumors are able to branch out and get additional blood vessels in order to supply themselves with more blood.

Nathan is a healthy little boy with a mass in his liver. He isn’t acting any differently than he always has, and the doctor says there is no reason to believe he won’t continue to be the boy he always has. He will of course be different while he is taking chemo but she believes that his entire treatment will only be 6mo’s. Nathan will be in the hospital today and most likely tomorrow and should receive his first dose of chemo then.