My name is William and I'm a little sick.: Week of Scans + Crazy Animals

This week William will have a bunch scans back to back. Like before, he will go through a 12 hour urine/kidney analysis, MIBG scan, CT scan and and bone marrow aspirates...all to make sure their are no signs of progressive disease. After we get all of the results back, he will be admitted for four days to start his first cycle of antibody treatments.

Many people ask me what the antibody treatment is and it is a little hard to explain. The antibodies are a protein made in cultured cells, using DNA technology to morph/fuse a human antibody with a mice antibody (called ch14.18). The ch14.18 binds well to neuroblastoma (NBL) cells and to tumor cells that are positive for GD2 (a sugar lipid that is strongly expressed on the surface of neuroblastoma cells), and helps destroy cancer cells. It binds very little to normal tissue, unlike chemotherapy that kills most rapidly-forming cells, normally found in our bodies. So to put it a little more simply, these little cooties can ID, bind to and destroy the neuroblastoma cells, but only on a small scale and only specific types of NBL (there are many types). Sorry for going technical on ya...

We are grateful that the antibodies don't beat up on Will's immune system like the chemotherapy but the therapy does have it's own side effects. The treatment does cause significant pain because it is pulsing the nervous system.

Bottomline: Please continue to pray for William as he undergoes this week of testing. Pray for clean test results and that Will will endure the antibody treatment as amazingly as he has everything else. He is truly one tough blonde kid. Oh, did I mention his hair is coming back in, just as white blonde as before. :)

Here are a couple of recent pictures of the boys, in their halloween costumes:
This giraffe looks very excited...