This one… he likes to keep it interesting, doesn’t he? We spent yesterday morning talking with his endocrine team after some really wild labs.
Chase’s numbers are suddenly kind of crazy and it could be for a lot of different reasons, but the most important and immediate concern is getting his levels back under control – and quickly.
You see, the longer his levels are all over the place, the more likely his thyroid-free body is to create a favorable environment for thyroid cancer re-growth – in his lymph nodes, especially. [spoiler alert: we *super* don’t want that]
So for now, the plan is to make immediate changes to the medications that are helping his body regulate things, and then we re-test everything in a few weeks.
As a parent who walked into this childhood cancer world under the auspices of a brain tumor diagnosis, waiting to re-test is a terrifying prospect because brain tumors often grow incredibly quickly and hours to days can make a huge difference in the end result. But… as Chase’s [very patient] endocrine team has had to remind me many times over the last four years: thyroid cancer is a different cancer with its own unique schedule of growth – in that way, at least, it is a far more gentle cancer.
So we sit for these weeks until the re-test and trust Chase’s weary body and his levels to the One who knows him best.
