Malachi & Elias

Happy Easter!

A Happy Easter to everyone. We dyed Easter eggs yesterday. This morning, Malachi and Elias gorged on chocolate. Then we went to church. They did an Easter egg hunt after church. In about half an hour, we are heading up to Litchfield, to Aunt Nancy's house.

Here are photos from yesterday, decorating Easter eggs.

Added information about 3F8 and HAMA

Since people constantly ask me the question "What is HAMA?", I put a bookmark under Neuroblastoma Resources,  pointing to MSKCC's own page on the topic.

The Decisive Moment

Last weekend, we went to the New York Hall of Science with my friends Jesi (and her kid Joshua) and Michelle (and kid Sarabeth and husband David). We all had a really great time. Malachi and Elias both love science museums.

All the kids particularly loved a Nautilus exhibit, where you can manipulate robot arms to pick up rocks, and play with lots of buttons and dials. Jesi meanwhile was playing with her new toy, a fancy Olympus digital SLR. At some point, we all started to move on, but Joshua and Elias were still playing in the Nautilus. Elias was on a stool so he could see. Jesi went to snap a photo. Suddenly, in one of those moments where everything seems to be moving too slowly, the stool somehow flipped up. Tom and I started to run, thinking that Elias would end up hitting his head on the hard metal. But Elias grabbed the bar with both hands and hung on. At that very moment, Jesi's finger went down on the shutter release, resulting in one of those "decisive moment" photos : Elias hangs on for dear life.

Elias was able to then lower himself gently to the ground. We had no idea he had the arm strength to hold himself like that.

Round 12 is done

Elias finished his 12 round of 3F8 antibody treatment on Friday. I am quite certain he did not HAMA. There was some discussion as to whether this should be the last round. The protocol says that they will do as many rounds as fits into a 24 month period from the first round (unless the kid HAMA's first, and most do). If Elias did a 13th round, the 24 month anniversary would fall in the middle of it.  So it was a little ambiguous.

On the theory that the antibody treatments are actually doing some good, I asked Dr Kushner (main oncologist on the team) if Elias could do one more treatment. After some consultation with the study's statistician, they decided that yes he can. So he will do one more round starting on May 30.  I felt kind of bad signing poor Elias up for another round - it isn't very much fun for him.

Elias will be doing scans the week of April 10, so keep him in your thoughts.