My son was diagnosed in august 2003-with a large tunor in his pelvis
he has finished radiation and is continuing with chemo. I have not
heard anyone talk about stem cell replacment. could you tell me
more?



-- In ewingssarcoma@yahoogroups.com, dave987321 <no_reply@y...>
wrote:
> My son was diagnosed with Ewing's in Dec '02. He had three
> months of chemo, surgery, and then more chemo for a total of
> 11 months of treatment. He just finished his final round
> of chemo. He had a large tumor in his pelvis, 1.3 liters.
> The surgery was an autoclave, autograph. (i.e. They removed
> the portion of his pelvis with the tumor, autoclaved the
> bone, and put the bone back in.)
>
> As we were approaching the end of his chemo, his oncologist
> started considering further treatment options. This came as
> a surprise because we were looking forward to being done and
> nothing had been mentioned prior to this. His oncologist is
> concerned that with the size of the tumor, a recurrence is
> more likely.
>
> Localized radiation was the first consideration, but we have
> ruled it out. We are aware of stem cell transplants, but
> don't know how helpful
> this is likely to be. It seems like when you talk to
> different doctors regarding treatment options and effectiveness,
> you get different opinions. This leaves us as the final
> decision makers, and we feel wholefully uninformed to be making
> these decisions. It has been hard to find information specific
> enough to his case to base decisions on.
>
> Of course, we have numerous questions, but here are a couple of
> the top ones we are trying to answer:
> How does his tumor size compare with other survivors?
> To what degree does the tumor size indicate that maybe a more
> aggressive treatment is appropriate?
> What additional treatments might be appropriate given
> the size of the tumor?
>
> Any help or referals to sources of information would be
> very appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Dave