Surgery Details

James is scheduled for surgery beginning at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. It will take about an hour and a half to do everything with anesthesia, and then the actual surgery part should begin around 9:00 and last at least 6 hours, but possibly more depending on what they find when they get in there. Dr. Sacco (our neurosurgeon) said that there are 2 types of tumor that it could be. One is a rhabdoid and the other is a pineoblastoma. The two look similar and the only way to tell them apart is to do gene testing on the tumor once its out. They have very different treatment regimes, and the rhadboid is much more aggressive. Once again, that is all we know because we are not googling anything! Once we know what type of tumor we'll learn about that one. So far, we feel like we've had a crash course on neurology!

Please pray that the tumor is a pineoblastoma. We would be so grateful for any treatment that is less aggressive! We will do chemo/radiation at Children's. They have told us that we will be in-patient at Children's for several weeks until they see how James tolerates the treatment plan.

The hospital has a Tumor Board that will review all of James' medical history and pathology reports. This Board will determine his treatment plan. The Board is comprised of our neurosurgeon, our oncologist (who we will meet tomorrow evening) and several other neurosurgeons and oncologists that make a joint decision. They typically meet on Thursday mornings, but I am pretty sure they re-convene if we miss that one on Thursday.

Our oncologist will be Dr. Laura Klesse who only deals with pediatric brain tumor oncology cases (can you believe how specialized that is?!). She will be coordinating the chemo or radiation and will manage James' care after the surgery. We've heard she's great so we are excited to meet her. Our Pediatrician spoke with her several times this weekend and Dr. Hubbard thinks that we will really like her.

We anticipate the surgery lasting until at least 5:00 p.m. tomorrow evening, but possible longer. James will go straight from surgery to the PICU neuro-trauma unit where we were Wednesday- Saturday morning. Tuesday morning he will be sedated again for a post-op MRI. If all goes well, we will be back on the Neuro floor (9th floor) at Children's on Tuesday afternoon.

Thank you again for your continued prayers and support. We are so blessed to be James' parents and are so thankful that he has so many people that love and support him. Thank you for blanketing him in prayer. We love you all.