Help Hannah Recover and Thrive

My name is Jackie Furlong and I am setting this up on behalf of my dear friends Erin and Jacques Pretorius and their beautiful daughter Hannah.

From Erin:

Ok everyone, this is going to be a long post so please know before I get into what has been happening this week that God is good, and Hannah is stable and making progress every day.

Tuesday we were called by the school to pick Hannah up for a bad headache and she was struggling to walk straight. This was the 7th major headache she'd had in the last 6 weeks, and with the added symptom of coordination issues I took her straight to the emergency department at Norton Children's. Once there, they listened to all my concerns and decided that a head CT was warranted to see if there was a visible reason for her pain. After they got her results, we were informed that she had a tumor in her brain against her cerebellum that was causing obstructive hydrocephalus in the 4th ventricle and she needed immediate surgery.

Tuesday night a neurosurgeon went in and removed the tumor to allow her brain to be able to recirculate the fluid in her brain and remove the pressure that was the main driver for the migraines. Wednesday morning they ran a fresh MRI of her brain and spinal cord, and confirmed that not only did he get 100% removed, but that she also has no other tumors in her spine.

Diagnosis: Today we have met with the hematologist and the oncology radiologist. They have given us a formal diagnosis of Medullablastoma, this is an extremely survivable cancer that is usually found in the brain, brain stem or spine. It does not usually metastasize to other organs or tissues, and the primary treatment will be radiation with a secondary of chemo.

Right now: Hannah is comfortable and making tiny gains every day. She has a very long road to recovery and will need a good bit of rehabilitation for the damage the tumor and surgery did to her brain. She mostly sleeps right now, and really doesn't want to open her eyes, so they are going to start some stimulants to help her over the next hill of being able to learn to communicate with us and start gaining motor function back.

Game plan: We are currently in the PICU, but she is stable enough now to be transferred elsewhere the problem is there are no empty beds on the cancer floor right now. We will be trying to get her over to Frazier rehab ASAP as they have the capabilities to help her get as strong as possible to get ready to start the next part of the fight.

The rest of the plan cannot be developed until we do her spinal tap in about 2 weeks to confirm whether or not there is cancerous tissue in her spinal fluid. If there is not any present, we can may be able to do the radiation here in Louisville, if there is any present or any other factors we may not yet know we possibly will have to go to Cincinnati Children's because they have a machine there that does proton radiation and there are none of those machines in Louisville. This is gentler on her other organs as well as her future with hormone health so we may have to move her up there for treatment but probably just be 6 weeks there and then come back to Louisville. They said her prognosis is very good, so from here it's just a matter of seeing how aggressive we have to be to complete getting her whole body clear of any bad cells.

We have been overwhelmed by all of the love and support everyone has given so far, and apologize if we do not respond to any well wishes as we're just going through the motions right now.