This picture is before we found out he had a tumor,he was eating cheetos.
We took Logan to numerous specialists,saying he was having seizures,all the doctors said the same thing,he was just holding his breath. I said no,he is clearly having a seizure, at first at 6 months old it looked like a breath holding spell,but as he got older the seizures got worse and worse. His doctor in manhattan referred us to a behavior specialist because he said breathholding spells are behavioral. So I took the video above to show the behavior specialist. After showing her this video of Logan having a seizure, she said it was a breath holding spell. We were grabbing our bags to leave and all of a sudden Logan had a seizure,and the behavior specialist says yes he is having a seizure,and she wants an MRI done on his brain.
So we went up to Childrens Mercy Hospital Kansas City and Logan had an MRI done on his brain,we then went to our hotel to wait for results.Anthony and I get back to the hotel,we picked up some chinese food to eat. It hadnt even been 30 min yet,our chinese had just been delivered, we had taken a few bites. When I get a phone call,its the hospital telling us Logan has a brain tumor,and they wanted us to come back up to look at the MRI results. I vomited. I could not eat anything more. I was bawling hysterically, calling family,i couldnt even say the word tumor without crying,every single time I said it.
We got to the hospital,we were like 10 min away. A doctor shows us the results, sure enough its a huge tumor, they said he needed to have emergency brain surgery. The tumor was the size of a golf ball,which is big in a babys head. Logan was 1yr 10 months at this time. The surgeon said there was a 60% chance he wouldnt make it through surgery without having major complications. This is where you had to make the decision do the benefits of surgery out weigh the risks of surgery. They said they would remove as much as the tumor as possible, then test it to see if its cancerous or not.
Logan had his brain surgery March 2011 at 1 yr 10 months old. The surgeon said hes pretty sure he got all of the tumor,but couldnt give the definite yes. So his tumor was sent off to be tested,and the results came back as a Grade 3 tumor,an Anaplastic Astrocytoma. It was Stage 3 cancer,theres 4 stages,stage 4 is terminal. It was the size of a golf ball. This is a picture from the internet, but this is exactly same picture the doctor showed us of Logans MRI. It looked like this
The surgeon ordered Logan see a Urologist,which is a cancer doctor. The recommended Logan do 1 1/2 yrs of Chemotherapy. To kill whatever cancer cells could still be in his body. Because they didnt know for sure if they got all of the tumor in surgery. The doctor also did a MRI of Logans spine,to make sure he had no cancer of his spine,because this specific kind of cancer can be found in the spine as well. The MRI of his spine came back clear. The doctor wanted to do radiation treatment as well to treat cancer that might still be present but said it would have majorly hindered Logans physical,mental developement.
Logan after his brain surgery.
So Logan started his Chemotherapy. The Urologist said Logan needed to undergo 1 1/2 years of Chemotherapy to help prevent his brain tumor from coming back. I took him up to Kansas City,which was 2 1/2 hrs from our house. I drove up there once every 3 weeks,so he could receive his Chemotherapy drugs through an IV port in his chest. He had to have surgery to have the port put in his chest. He eventually had his port surgically removed when he finished his treatments. Each of his treatments last 2-3 days. I stayed in the hospital with him the whole time while pregnant with our second son Landon. Logan had to have blood work done once every single week,which i had to hold him down,so the RN could poke his port and draw labs, so she could check his white blood cell count. To see if his body was ready and strong enough to receive another treatment. If they werent a certain number then he couldnt receive chemotherapy treatment,he had to wait a few days and have his labs re-drawn until his white blood cell count reached the desired number. Holding Logan to get his labs drawn was one of the hardest things i ever had to do,he fought hard during his labs,he hated it. His doctor said he believes Logan was born with the brain tumor,based off the size and severity of when we found it. He described it as when Logan was developing in my belly an abnormal cell was created and that cell kept duplicating and caused a cluster of abnormal cells,which is a brain tumor.
