Background Story

One night in November, Tayler started having sudden seizures. She was rushed to the emergency room. As they tried to control the seizures, they decided she needed to be taken to Children’s Hospital. They did some tests and found that she had a small lesion, the size of her own pinkie nail, located on her right temporal lobe. She was hopitalized for one week, and then released. She was given some anti-seizure medications and told that she needed a follow up in six weeks for another MRI.

The six week MRI showed that the lesion had grown to 3 1/2 times the size of the original lesion. Tayler was immediately admitted back to Children's Hospital and emergency surgery was scheduled to remove the lesion that was now the size of a golf ball. The surgery went as well as planned and the Ellison’s were informed that Tayler had a highly aggressive infection. They went for about 24 hours thinking this until they were finally told they were informed incorrectly and Tayler in fact has cancer.

Tayler had to have a second surgery to remove the rest of the tumor. The surgery was a success, the entire tumor was removed. The Ellison’s have been traveling a long hard road. They have found out that their beautiful little girl has cancer and have been waiting for a week to get a full diagnosis.

On December 30, 2008, the Ellison’s were given a 100% diagnosis for their daughter.

Tayler has a grade 4 Astrocytoma which is named a Glioblastoma. There are 4 grades of Astrocytoma, grades 1 and 2 are benign, grades 3 and 4 are malignant. The Ellison’s knew a few days prior that Tayler had a malignant tumor so they weren’t surprised to know it was high grade Asctrocytoma.

With this, they have also found some of Tayler’s treatment plan. She will begin radiation and chemotherapy on January 13^th. The first day they will be administering both chemotherapy and radiation at the hospital. They will be doing this to see what kind of reaction she may have to the chemo. After the first day, Shane and Alena will be giving the chemo to Tayler at home through her PICC line that is currently in her arm.

In order for Tayler to receive the radiation she will have to be sedated. The first round of treatment will be 30 sessions or about 6 1/2 calendar weeks with chemo and radiation being given each weekday, with just a couple of exceptions.

After the first round, Tayler will have a three week break andwill then start a new round of chemo without radiation. The second round will alternate between two different chemo meds. The first medicaiton will be given for two weeks, followed by a second medication for one week. This three week pattern continues for a total of 12-16 weeks with no breaks.

Tayler will then get another short break (about a week) before beginning the third phase in her treatment which is a one week on, one week off, chemo cycle to continue until about the end of the year.

They will be doing MRIs about every three months during treatment to look for any signs of the tumor returning. They will be looking for completely clean MRIs as the surgery took out the tumor mass that could be detected and are fighting this on a cellular level now.

The treatment is very aggressive because the type of tumor is so aggressive. Tayler will be hit hard by all of the medication and radiation, but this is what will give her the best shot at a cure.

The prognosis for a Glioblastoma tumor are not pleasant. On a positive note,
although the doctor stated a complete removal of the tumor probably doubled her chances. However, she is still looking at a 20% survival rate. The doctor advised the rate for adults with the same tumor is less than 2%.