Jumble premonition?

If any of you out there are puzzle people, you might understand this. Yesterday, while waiting for Dante to have his scans, I picked up the paper to do the puzzles to pass the time. Now, the last time that I, a mother of a toddler and newborn, have had a chance to do that? Can't remember. When you get out of practice with the puzzles of a certain paper, it usually takes longer to solve the first ones - or at least it does for me. Well, yesterday,in a matter of minutes each, I had solved the crossword, the cryptoquote, the sudoko and solved the jumble with no help. I said to Chris - it must be a sign...

Great news! The alpha feta-protein? 75,000 when we came in August, should be 15-20 in a 2 year old. His is 1800! Huge drop! We still have a way to go, but that is significant.

The CT scan? quotes from the radiologist: "an enhancing pelvic floor mass seen on the previous study is significantly decreased in size and now only faintly visualized", "marked improvement" in the chest and lung nodules.

We are very pleased to hear such positive news. Of course, the reality comes in asking more specific questions of the doctor. It is possible for the tumors to stop responding or to plateau after a significant decrease. It is more than likely that we will need more than 4 rounds of chemo to get Dante into remission. There are of course a million scenarios, but we like the one we are having so far. It was interesting to find out that while they see a couple of germ cell tumors per year, they only see a stage 4 every few years. Many of the cases that Dr. Grana mentions seem to be teenage boys. She always sounds very positive about the possibility of Dante going into remission sooner rather than later. But she did add today as we pressed, that there are cases where it recurs within 2 years. Hopefully Breyer's doesn't mind us melting away all their ice cream for our cause.....maybe we should ask them for a sponsorship!.....

Thanks for all the melted ice cream, it is working wonders...