Theo is 7, and on March 3, 2018, he told me he had a goal. He wanted to take the training wheels off his bike. He said he would practice every day until they were off, so he could be a real biker.
That was interrupted a few days later after an eye exam at Nemours turned into an inpatient MRI of the brain at Wolfson Children’s Hospital and a diagnosis of optic glioma – a brain tumor that grows along the optic nerve. We learned the damage caused by the tumor was too extensive for surgical removal. He had already lost vision in his left eye and surgical removal would not reverse this. Further, the risk was too great to the optic nerve on the right. Theo began chemotherapy the week after surgery to implant a port.
Oh, and today when he got on his bike, he took off like Flash. He said he was in training – that’s how you become a real biker. Theo loves to learn magic tricks, play golf, and beat you in a game of chess.
We’ve had lots of chemotherapy treatments, port placement surgery, and have several big cancer planning / surgical evaluation appointments coming up. We have not had any shrinking and the tumor is continuing to grow. I’m a single parent and financially it’s been hard.
Hope session by Ariel Rose Photography