UPDATE 11

Apologies for the space and time since the last update! Things began to move quickly the beginning of the week, so here’s a little catch up.

On Monday, Jack started having symptoms (headache, blurry vision, his right eye felt bulgy) and so he headed to the ER.

The pathology report came back as inconclusive again so we’re still not sure what this thing is. An MRI showed that both the tumors grew and, as of right now, it’s looking more like the two tumors may actually be related (ie what we thought was the acoustic neuroma is possibly a part of the pineal gland tumor).

On Wednesday evening, Dr Zahar performed brain surgery. It was an aggressive surgery and Jack made it through well! Dr Z took as much as he safely could and got a ton of tissue for testing so we should have more answers soon. The rest of the tumor he left behind is touching important parts of the brain and will need to be tackled with chemo / radiation. A plan for that will be created once they get the pathology report back.

Thursday morning, the day after the surgery, there were some complications (brain swelling) and they had to put in a drain to drain fluid from his ventricles. The procedure went well and the drain is doing its job, thankfully!

It’s been a day by day recovery and each day Jack is doing a bit better. Today he’s more aware and has been starting to talk (he was even able to tell me he likes my new hat!).

For now, he’s recovering in the ICU, working on keeping blood pressure and brain swelling down. His ventricles are small (which is good) and he’s showing progress. The doc is hoping to begin weaning the drain off early this coming week.

Please keep sending Jack lots of love!