Philadelphia

Thursday the 20th was a marathon day... We got up at 3 AM and got on the road for Philly at 3:30 to make a 7:30 appointment with Dr. Grant Liu, a neuro-opthalmologist. Dr. Liu is considered an international expert on optic gliomas. Dr. Liu is quite confident that the tumor growth as well as the vision loss have happened quite rapidly - this goes against the general characteristics of optic gliomas, as they are considered to be slow growing tumors. I'm not sure we will ever know how long the tumor has been growing, but I also feel strongly that Zoe's vision loss began happening in the last two months. The visit with Dr. Liu gave us hope of some of Zoe's vision returning. In his experience, 30% of patients that have lost vision within the last six months have had slight positive changes in vision after a round of chemotherapy.

After hanging out in the hospital for several hours, we met with Dr. Phillips, a pediatric neuro-oncologist. Dr. Peter Phillips was in agreement of moving forward with chemotherapy. It brings us a lot of peace and confidence moving forward with this decision after having several experts agree that this is the best way forward - for now... Dr. Phillips made it clear that even after chemotherapy we can expect Zoe's tumor will begin growing again at some point down the road. We will constantly need to monitor and reassess how to treat the problem. For now, the goal is to prolong surgery, protect the vision in her left eye, and possibly restore some of the vision in her right eye.