The discovery of the disease
On August 15, 2008, we go on vacation in the South. On the ride, Lisa is crying and complaining about her head, it will only last a few minutes. In the days that followed, Lisa refused to walk, ate less and less, refused gambling and spent very restless nights. Despite various consultations with the doctor, blood tests, no one will be able to tell us what Lisa was suffering from.
On August 30, we returned to Paris and Lisa's condition did not improve. We go to the emergency room and an intern will examine Lisa, and send us home with Doliprane, diagnosing an Influenza State. The night that will follow will be hellish, Lisa will wake up every half hour crying.
The next morning, we went back to the emergency room and there, a doctor suspected a tumour, we went to the scanner, the images spoke right away.
Lisa has a mass in the cerebellum and suffers from intracranial hypertension. Immediately, we will leave with the SAMU at the Necker hospital. Lisa was 2 and a half years old.
Surgery
At Necker, the neurosurgeons send us directly for an MRI. The diagnosis is confirmed, Lisa suffers from a brain tumor. She will be operated on for the first time on the night of August 31 to September 1, 2008 to reduce intracranial hypertension. On September 3, she will stay 8 hours in the operating room to remove the tumor mass.
It will be a success, the Neurosurgeons confirm having removed everything. A few days later, we will receive the results of the tumor mass anapathe, Dr. Puget announces to us that it is a highly malignant tumor of the cerebellum, a desmoplastic medulloblastoma, a CANCER._cc781905-5cde-3194- bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ We will not immediately realize the seriousness of the disease.
A week later, we will return home with our little girl, who had regained her joy of living, with small difficulties in walking but nothing alarming.
Treatments
On September 17, 2008, we meet the pediatric oncologist from the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif. This first consultation will mark us for life. Lisa was doing very well, she had recovered her physical condition and yet, Dr. Dufour will tell us that Lisa is seriously ill. She will explain to us that, without treatment, Lisa will not survive. We listen, dumbfounded, to the program planned to cure our little Angel. Despite clear explanations, we did not imagine the life that awaited us and the heaviness of the treatments that Lisa will undergo.
On September 18, doctors will install an implantable port under Lisa's skin. From September 19, 2008, she will receive her first course of chemotherapy.
The first treatment will last 5 days in hospital, Lisa meets the nurses but will be very scared in the face of this new world. We will start explaining to her why we had to do this and that we were going to heal her. From the first days, side effects will appear (vomiting, hair loss).
Between the 1st cure and the second, 15 days will pass. The vomiting has subsided but the chemotherapy drugs will destroy the immune system of our little princess, for 8 days, Lisa will live with only 300 white blood cells. It is fragile and it will have to be protected from infections, this is called aplasia. This phenomenon will recur after each course of chemotherapy.
After 3 weeks, she will lose her brown hair and look like all her boyfriends from IGR. Bald-headed little cabbages. Lisa will always be so beautiful.
Lisa must undergo 5 cures of 5 days at high doses, the first 3 will go rather well but after 3 months of treatment, Lisa will vomit a lot, she will be very weak and lose a lot of weight. Lisa will start treatments at 14kg 500 in September. At the end of November, she will weigh only 10kg. She can barely walk because of her state of weakness. The dietician will decide, in agreement with us, to put a nasogastric tube in her. Lisa will be fed at night through nutrition pouches.
Despite all this, Lisa will be full of joie de vivre and will remain our little princess with her mischievous look and naughty thoughts. Lisa has adapted to the hospital and will become the mascot of the IGR, she loves going there, it will be her second home and she will forge very special bonds with the nursing staff.
During his few difficult months, we will do 2 MRIs which will be perfect. We will finish the induction cures at the end of January with a very thin little girl, very weak but in good health.
In February, we will begin maintenance cures, the rhythm will be less intense, it will be 2 days per month of chemotherapy. Lisa recovers over time, will start eating again and will be able to walk, run again. In June 2009, we will remove the nasogastric tube, Lisa feeds alone again.
Lisa's life will be punctuated by chemotherapy treatments, blood tests twice a week, physiotherapy sessions and regular platelet and red blood cell transfusions.
Regular hospitalizations, treatment and its constraints will not prevent Lisa from living. It will be a mischievous little girl, who laughs all the time. We still remember his bursts of laughter through the corridors of the hospital with the clowns "the doctor's laugh" or his constant back and forth in the corridor of the 9th floor of the IGR. Or even his relevant reflections because Lisa was of a particular intelligence. Everyone remembers his passion for Mary poppins, the merry-go-round and playing doctor at home with his family and boyfriends. Lisa will never complain and show exceptional courage. She fought like a boss for 14 months.
relapse
Unfortunately, on November 4, 2009, almost at the end of the treatment, after a control MRI, the Oncologist announced a relapse. The disease returned...
On November 17, Lisa will be operated on again to remove the small ball that had reappeared. The operation will go well but the disease will progress very quickly and the surgery will be useless. We will try a new chemotherapy for 15 days, nothing will help. The relapse will be of a rare aggressiveness, the cancerous cells will invade the little head of our little Mary Poppins. She will have just enough time to celebrate Christmas 2009 with all her family to fall into a coma on the evening of December 25.
Lisa will remain in intensive care at Necker from December 25, 2009 to December 29, 2009, despite an extraordinary fighting spirit, Lisa will die and join the angels on December 29, 2009 at 8:45 p.m. surrounded by her dad and her mom.
She was 3 years and 11 months old.
