Addison's Story
Childs name: Addison
Diagnosis: Ependymoma - posterior fossa
Diagnosis date: February 2010
Childs age: Almost 2
Treatment summary: Surgery to remove tumor, 30 proton radiation treatments
Proton center: Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania - Roberts Proton Therapy Center
Oncologist: Dr. Lustig
Number of treatments: 30
Proton dates: March 2010/May2010
Learn about treatment: Internet research
Story: In February of 2010 our daughter Addison developed flu like symptoms. After a long week of not knowing the cause of her symptoms, we received the devastating news that she had a brain tumor located on her brain stem. After a very successful surgery to remove the ependymoma tumor we knew the next step in Addison's treatment would be radiation. Not knowing anything about radiation, and wanting to be sure that our daughter received the very best care, we began to research via the Internet, everything we could find on radiation. Every time that we would enter into an Internet search specific to pediatric radiation for brain tumors, the one common result that popped up was Proton Beam Radiation. After very long nights on the computer and reading many medical journal articles it became obvious that Proton Beam Radiation was what would be best for our daughter to receive. There were no Proton centers in our state, but we were extremely pleased to learn that Addison could be treated at the Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) - Roberts Proton Therapy Center. When we arrived at CHOP, we were so scared and did not know what to expect. Everyone we met went out of their way to make us feel at home. It was a long 6 weeks, but the compassion of the doctors, nurses and staff at CHOP made it much easier on us. Our daughter did not have any immediate side effects from the proton beam radiation. She looked forward to going to the hospital every morning because she liked the nurses and staff so much. We could not have been any happier with our decision to receive treatment at CHOP. We are now one year past the end of Addison's radiation treatments and we continue to do MRI scans to make sure the tumor does not return.