Carter Has Cancer?!?

Bennett and Carter, right, at Grandma's for Easter 2009

Carter and Jesse Black playing last week in our backyard

Carter waiting for an ultrasound on his enlarged abdomen

The boys sleep over together in the living room before Carter's off to CHOC

Our family got some sad news yesterday, Friday, April 17th. Carter, who is now 22 months-old, has been preliminarily diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer. Thursday we felt something hard in Carter's stomach region and clearly it was not normal. Friday morning we immediately saw our pediatrician and we were sent to Hoag Hospital for an ultrasound, then a CT scan and finally blood work. Carter endured a lot through the late evening, and by 8:30pm Friday night we had this unbelievable diagnosis. We believe it to be a type of liver cancer found in children called hepatoblastoma. It's very rare with only about 100 cases per year reported.

This news has hit us like a ton of bricks. We are struggling with the fact that this little, healthy acting boy could have such a horrific disease. It is virtually impossible to extract words to describe our emotions at this point. "Our baby has cancer" was never a sentence we thought we would ever be saying. If we can be lucky in this instance, Southern California has a number of fantastic children’s hospitals experienced with this type of cancer. Looks like we will be at one of the best, CHOC!