The  primary tumor responded very well to the chemotherapy and it is in a safe place to be surgically removed. We had a meeting with our surgeon, Dr. Rothstein, to discuss the plan for surgery all the good and scary things that happen during surgeries. Honestly, I had spent the weekend excited by the reduction in size and was brought back to reality that every surgery has risks and Liam’s tumor was not the neat little nugget that I pictured. (Easy to write all of this months later knowing that all went well).

We did our best pretending that  nothing exciting was happening on the morning of surgery. We have made so many visits to the hospital that Liam is nearly unfazed by our trips.

We said we were heading in for a picture of his tummy and when he woke after surgery, confused about everything, we said they found something that needed fixing. Liam accepted that logic and never revisited the issue.  Surgery was a success, simply put it was not as tough as it could have been. When the doctors are happy we are happier.

We spent a few nights in the PICU(pediatric intensive care unit) Liam recovered well and could have moved out after the first night but there was a bit of a room crunch on our home away from home(4W).

We were discharged on  Monday, August 9th and then plan to start Round 6  on Friday…not much down time.