Today marked the last day of the induction phase of his treatment. We were up early and made the 3 hour trip to Halifax without any issues. Lochlan was sad and scared when we first arrived (steroids still working their awful magic), but settled in and even had a few moments of feeling like himself while we were talking with one of the oncologists. He had his lumbar puncture to test for blasts in is spinal fluid and to give him preventative chemo in his spinal fluid at the same time he had his bone marrow aspirate to test for leukaemia in the bone marrow. The goal is that all the treatment to this point will have given him “remission” - or no leukaemia in the bone marrow.
I finally had the opportunity to ask more about his change in status from “standard risk” to “high risk” B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). Well, it turns out that even though 90% of all pediatric leukaemia is ALL, less than 0.5% of all of those cases are what Lochlan has: “near haploid ALL”. The results of today’s test will help give more info about his prognosis, but we won’t have the results back on that until at least Friday (they’re sending it to Toronto to test). If there are any leukaemia cells in the bone marrow then that lessens his prognosis but if there isn’t any then it strengthens it. I am trying to not get too far ahead of myself, because when we left the hospital 10 days ago the oncologists said the prognosis is 70-77% so I’m trusting in that for now since Dr. Google has me heartbroken with prognosis of 25-40%. We will meet with the oncology team on Friday when Lochlan is in surgery to get his PICC line removed from his arm and a port put in his chest. It is then that we should have a lot more answers and info and plan a course of treatment. The doctor today said that for his case, so far, they don’t have a bone marrow transplant on the radar (that’s a good thing— those are reserved for even worse cases). He also said that one of the genetic mutations on the c19 that Lochlan has is one of the genes that the new immunotherapy drug targets, so it should be effective in that regard. Sigh.
One step at a time. Praying 🙏
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