Since Riley is the featured Hero this month, I thought I should update her story.
On Riley's 1st birthday, a surgeon told us our beautiful baby had cancer. Over a heartbreaking 2 week period, while awaiting results from the all tests Riley had, we finally learned that Riley had Stage 2B Neuroblastoma.
Stage 2B neuroblastoma means that if at least 50% of the primary tumor was resected then the rest should go away on its own and most likely not return. In Riley's case, her surgeon, Dr Mattei, resected almost 90% of the the tumor. However, that 10% he left behind could never be found on follow up MRIs.
Soon after Riley's 2nd birthday, we were told once again that she had a tumor in her neck and that it was most likely recurrence of her disease. This tumor was not near the old tumor site but still the right side of her neck. A week later, Riley had surgery again. Dr. Mattei removed the entire tumor this time, leaving none behind!
There was only a very small chance of this happening, so we were so shocked and devastated. We learned that this tumor had been there for some time so we were so afraid that this time it may have spread- however an entire body scan showed it again was just in her neck (meaning it did not spread to bone marrow and she did not have any other tumors).
It has been a crazy year, but all we can say is that Riley is one tough little girl! She is still growing like a weed and developing like any other healthy toddler.
The good news is what we have done for ALSF - we have helped raise about $7,500.00. Our team, Team Smiley Riley was a huge success- we had about 80 runners and walkers supporting us!
Riley's next scan is this Thursday, Please pray that it is clear!!!!!!
