Hi my son had retinoblastoma in one eye and has successfully beaten it for now
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Much to our shock and devastation, our beautiful 6 month old boy was diagnosed on Friday with retinoblastoma, cancer of the eye. As the are hoping to save his eye, he will be having chemo to reduce the tumor before it is lasered.
I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice or experience on what I can expect? We are absolutely heartbroken and it has all happened so fast. Thursday we were enjoying our healthy boy, 24 hours later we had a child with cancer :(
I am sorry to learn about your son, and i understand what you may be going through as it happened to my son as well. He was 1 yr old when he was diagnosed with retinoblastoma in his right eye, his tumor was at very advanced stage and doctor gave us two options, one to take out the eye or second was to undergo 6 sessions of chemotherapy and post that numerous lazer therapy sessions, however this option had no guarantees as it only works if the tumor responds to chemo sessions.
The Chemo sessions
So 3 years back our fight with cancer started, initial chemo sessions are very hard, in our case it was given to my son via drip which takes about 5 to 7 hours to finish, this is the toughest part. Few things you will see, the issue with finding the nerve via which to inject the drip with chemo drug (have strong heart here because it’s not easy to see as sometimes they might not get the nerve easily). Secondly, how do u keep such a small baby still and engaged during a long session (take toys, music, ipads anything to keep him distracted, you will get a chance to feed him but i think after the session)
Post the session is over, during that week he has to be given immunity boosters drugs to keep his immunity up which suffers because of the nature of chemo drugs. General chemo side effects include fever, stomach upsets, baby crying a lot, however these are only some of them for details consult the oncologist who will advice you on the chemo sessions.
Lazer Therapy
Post that lazer therapy is given under local anesthesia to the kid which is easier only thing is when he comes out of a session, you need to just observe till that time he is conscious again and can give him some water or juice after an hour or so.
My main suggestion after going through this ordeal is, have a strong heart, try to make the chemo sessions as much fun as possible to keep the child distracted from the actual procedure, finally it’s a long road but keep walking each step to recovery. May GOD heal your child
I recently started work on spreading awareness on retinoblastoma with a Non Profit organization based in India called tumoreye and am still working on my website. You can also find me: tumoreye on twitter, pinterest and facebook
Regards
Basudev