More on Three Years Ago...

I intentionally kept quiet on the blog the past few days because it took this long three years ago before Ethan was sedated, MRI'd and had a biopsy of one of his growths (the doctor was able to take the full nodule from his neck, reducing his tumour count).  Four days of waiting for them to start working towards finding answers was torturous for us.  The results took a while to get as well but I'm not going to hold off that long to write again, as honestly I do not remember how long we waited...I can say it felt like FOREVER!!!  In the end, they were able to tell us that he has a large fluid filled cyst at the back of his head which pushed the rest of his brain forward as it consumed the space.  The MRI also showed us that he had eight tumours (including the one that was biopsied), most of them were external but he had a significant one inside his chest in the left upper lobe area of his lung.  It was just above his heart but under the aortic arch.  His biopsy results showed the tumours to be Infantile Myofibromatosis.  ???  I can tell you it took a while for us to learn how to say that...let alone spell it so we could research it online.  Infantile Myofibromatosis (IM to some), is a rare condition (by 1997 there were 231 documented cases since the 1960's) which presents with benign muscle and fibre tissue tumours.  The natural progression of these type of tumours is that they grow big really fast and then typically have mass cell die-off over time.  I will post more into the ABC's of E page regarding this condition at a later time.


Flash forward to this past weekend, and Ethan had a pretty great birthday.  He got to celebrate over three days, had two cakes and of course a lot of presents. 

This one was taken the night of his birthday.  He was too tired to participate in much, so we held off celebrating the family portion until the next day.  Lorelei came home from daycare looking very festive though.
 

Besides him being tired on his actual birthday, celebrating the following day allowed me time to complete his cake.  Elmo was a whole lot easier to make than Dora for Lorelei's birthday where most of the cake stayed in the pan, but getting his colours was difficult because I was using neon food colouring and not regular ones.

But it seems, the birthday boy didn't mind...

He even enjoyed playing with it a bit...after he'd thrown the piece off his tray once...  (You can see how tired he is by the lean, his leaning to the right has gotten worse it seems.)

On day three, Ethan got to enjoy some presents from his Nan & Pop.  He was rather upset with me when I tried to move his brand new vtech ball out of his way so it would be easier to open his gifts.  So I quickly put it back where he wanted it.  He sure knows how to communicate his likes and dislikes.  ;)