BP Spills Coffee

Lols. Thanks for the Friday afternoon laughs Wob Tsang.

TACE

I've been sitting here reading through articles on benign soft-tissue neoplasms with hopes that I can add one of them to my differential of rhabdomyosarcoma for this boy that just came in yesterday with a completely asymptomatic lump. His biopsy is tomorrow and PET/CT is next week so we'll know by then what he's got...

TACE stands for transcatheter arterial chemoembolization. I'm looking after another young boy with a hepatoblastoma who received a portion of his chemotherapy via TACE. It is most often used in adults for hepatocellular carcinoma but we're hoping that it will have similar success in a pediatric population to allow for surgical resection. Combined with adjuvant chemotherapy, the survival rates following complete resection are as high as 89%.



I was talking to a friend of mine and he asked me if I found all this cancer stuff interesting. I told him that I did. He said he found it absolutely terrible hearing about all these kids suffering. It got me thinking. So far I've been absolutely fascinated by all the new things I'm learning in oncology that I haven't stopped to think how some people think this is all terrible while I'm finding it...terribly interesting? Have I become some sick, heartless robot?

I don't know why I watched this next video. It was the top hit when I typed 'hepatoblastoma' into YouTube. I think this girl resembles almost all of the kids that are seen on the oncology ward. They're all cute, they're all beautiful and they've all got cancer. I realize I'm not a robot and I just try really really hard not to think about what will happen to this boy if the TACE doesn't work.