Support Aldan!!

Not long after Aldan turned 2 he started having seizures. He was rushed to the doctor. The doctors at this point believe no neurology issue is present . They think a little more about it and decide they will check his blood sugar and modify his diet. Still the seizures keep coming. Now more aggressively. Still only lasting a max of one minute at a time but climbing to about three times a day. They meet with a Neurology specialist. Aldan is a classic epilepsy case. They do another EEG in their office and they see abnormalities stemming from the Right Frontal Lobe. They seem confident this is definitely Epilepsy. They start medication. Once on the medicine there was really no signsof seizures stopping. They upped the dosage twice. They seemed a little more controlled but it was still never handled. So they schedule him an MRI. At this point doctors are doing it just for "safety precautions", they didn’t feel like they would find anything but just to be sure. After having the MRI, Aldan’s parents get a phone call that they have found a massive brain tumor. The right side of Aldan’s brain was completely atrophied and over taken with this enormous mass. Doctors feel that surgery is important ASAP because the tumor has invaded parts of the brain that are highly dangerous. Doctors said they would have the tumor biopsied while in surgery and when they get the results of that they will be very aggressive in removing as much as possible with out hurting Aldan. Surgery day comes and it takes 11 hours. They removed his frontal lobe and some other small sections of tumor but could not successfully retract the whole thing. After surgery they were told they would have to wait for the Pathology results. Pathology has decided his tumor is a DNET and he would need no further treatment, just observations. The family is, of course, elated! No chemo! No cancer! But the Neurosurgeon who had operated on several DNETS was not convinced of this finding. So he took it to the tumor board ( a group of doctors that work exclusively with brain tumors) and they had a huge debate. Pathology agreed they made the wrong call and upgraded Aldans tumor to a Grade 2 Glioma. Not the worst of gliomas but have a strong chance of growing into stage 3 and 4 gliomas, basically over taking his brain with cancer if that happens. So they suggest starting Chemo ASAP. Doctors explain if the tumor gets any further back in Aldans brain they are doing Aldan a great disservice and he may not be treatable at that point. Chemotherapy starts in December. The hopes of this treatment are to shrink the tumor down small enough for his surgeon to be able to go back in there and take the rest of it out. The family has one year of Chemotherapy, once a week and then phase 2 of tumor treatment will begin. He may lose his hair within the first three months but his Oncologist says it will grow back before Chemo ends. Doctors have to keep an eye on his hearing, liver, and kidneys. Chemo can do a number on those things.