Mar

19

Support Joey Gruber

Posted by admin

March 19, 2008 |

Every once in a while you get to be involved in something special. I have been involved in developing a site for Joey Gruber. Joey is a special boy, and son to one of my personal friends. I will let his father explain what’s going on, because he says it best:

“On Friday, 11/24/06, Joey underwent brain surgery to remove a large fast-growing tumor located in the fluid near his brain stem. He was diagnosed only a couple days prior at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital due to unusually mild symptoms. The tumor had quickly grown large enough to block the flow of Cerebral Spinal Fluid, causing periodic headaches. Doctors needed to perform the surgery before they could determine what type of tumor Joey had. After a 4 hour surgery they were able to perform a 100% gross total resection and identify the mass as ependymoma. It is a rare tumor that affects young children and its cause is still unknown.

In some cases, even after a successful surgery, this tumor can reoccur. To help prevent this Joey received 33 conformal radiation treatments at the site where the tumor was removed. Fortunately, to this day, no sign of ependymoma has been found at the original site. However, nearly one year later, 3 smaller ependymoma masses showed up on a routine MRI. They were visible in his spinal fluid at the lower, middle and upper back. Because the upper mass was so large, it threatened to compress nerves in Joey’s spine and cause paralysis in his arms. It prompted Joey’s team of doctors to begin Chemotherapy immediately. The chemotherapy drugs he was administered were best known to destroy this type of cancer and yet they only stood a little better than a 50% chance of being effective. It was the best treatment option at that point because it had the most limited side effects. After a seven week cycle (completed the week of Christmas ’07) the masses still grew in size and Joey began to experience back pain. He was put on some pretty strong steroids to alleviate the pressure. Currently Joey is undergoing radiation treatment to his spine to destroy these masses and to prevent reoccurrence. He will have an MRI at the end of February to look at the progress.

Joey is an exceptional 3 and ½ year old. He is gracious, considerate and rather conservative. It may take him a little while to warm up to you, but if you get him going you’d find that he is quite the conversationalist. He loves to play games and draw and always feels that “the more, the merrier”. He likes to be assured of things he is not yet familiar with, but he is very brave. It is inspiring to know what he has gone through and continues to endure without being sad, or mad, or show even a sign of being discouraged.When it comes to getting a new medicine, maintain his central line, have a medical procedure, check-up or treatment, he accepts it as a part of his life and does his best to learn about it so that he can help. He cherishes family and friends, and to know him is to love him.”

If you can, and you feel led, please help support Joey in his fight. One simple way is to link to Joey’s site, using the “chicklet” or button. You can find it on Joey’s site.




Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Shauna Smith on March 20, 2008 7:48 pm

    Joey-
    Carter and I had so much fun playing with you at Bonnie and Millie’s last week. Hopefully we can do it again soon.

    We love you! Shauna and Carter (and the rest of the Smith Family

  2. Jenny on April 6, 2008 1:59 pm

    can’t donate anything but i’ll keep him in my thoughts. :)

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