On Tuesday January 25th, after a week of unidentified fevers and suspicious urinary tract symptoms, our 23 month old daughter, Avery, was rushed to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital ER straight from her pediatrician's office. That night, a rare malignant pediatric tumor called a Wilms' Tumor was found on Avery's kidney via an ultrasound and she was admitted to the Oncology ward. On Monday January 31st, Avery's kidney which had been engulfed by the papaya sized tumor was removed during a 3 1/2 hour surgery. She also has metastases of the tumor in her lungs. She is considered to be Stage IV. She started chemotherapy treatment on Friday, February 11th. Her treatment schedule is outpatient 1x/week at LPCH for 6 weeks, and then she will undergo a CT scan to determine if her lung tumors have responded to the chemotherapy and disappeared. The outcome of the CT will determine if she will need radiation to the lungs and if she will need to have a more intensive chemotherapy protocol for the remaining 16 weeks of treatment. In the middle of all of this our beautiful, healthy baby boy, Bryson Scott Henderson, was born at Lucile Packard on Sunday January 30th at 9:42 am. He was 3 weeks early. Avery and Bryson's older sister, Laynie, will be 4 at the end of April.
My husband Scott and I live with our family in Los Altos.
For more info about Avery:
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/averyhenderson/mystory
Please help us this year by attending Divas For Life 2011, which will be presented in the Eagle Theater at Los Altos High School on May 23rd at 7:00pm.
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