In September of 1998, Nicole started complaining that her head hurt. She was
stumbling, falling, very irritable, and definitely not herself.
We gave her Tylenol, which helped only for a short time before she was screaming
again.
We took her in to Children's and they gave her an MRI.
We were told that Nicole's tumors were growing rapidly, and that the headache
and mood changes were caused by Hydrocephalus (fluid pressure buildup in the
brain).
We were told that she would need to have a shunt installed to relieve the
pressure.
The following day, the doctors inserted a Ventricular Peritoneal Shunt to
relieve the pressure.
We were told that we would need to put Nicole on Chemotherapy, and we decided
that Resecting the tumors was a last resort option too risky,
as was Radiation {causes too much brain damage in young children}
We also made the decision not to open her up for a biopsy, we figured that the
risk was unnecessary since the treatment was the same anyway.
The next day we had a Venaport installed and began 1 1/2years of weekly
doses of Chemotherapy.
We had a lot of ups and downs during this period, from toxicity from the
Vincristine to Nicole pulling the line out of the bottle and showering
Carboplatin all over. (she truly is a handful)
We had an MRI of her spine. And found tumors in the L4,L5 area. Which remain
stable.
Nicole completed her treatment in April of 2000, The tumors were reduced in size
and stopped growing. but were still there. We go every three months
for MRI to monitor them. So far the tumors are stable (no growth).
Nicole actually looks forward to her trips to the hospital, and I am glad we let
them put
the port in. It keeps us from having to insert a peripheral IV, and with Emla
cream, she has very little discomfort from inserting the IV.