At 6 weeks of age a mass was found near Landon's right eye. Doctors had no idea what it was but prepared us for the worst. It was removed just 5 days from his first set of CT scans. The tumor had doubled in size and had eroded a hole in his temporal bone about the size of a quarter. When pathology came back we received the awesome news that it wasn't as aggressive of cancer as we had feared. It was called a Melanotic Neuroectodermal Tumor of Infancy.
There are only 200 known cases of these tumors worldwide with only 6 tumors being anywhere but the jaw. Landon's was only the 2nd one to have shown up in the eye socket. These tumors are very aggressive while active but once it's gone, there are no records of it returning after one year of its last occurrence.
Since it was so rare, doctors didn't know how to handle treatment at first. Sadly, just two weeks after a clean CT scan the tumor had returned! This time we were told they would take his eye, eyelids and portions of his bone.
Praise the Lord a resident doctor found the one and only other case of same type tumor in the same area. They chose not to take the eye and lids and instead planned chemotherapy. We did end up losing more skull matter than expected. They basically removed a baseball amount of skull including his entire eye socket, portions of the forehead, temporal and cheek bone. This left Landon with an eye but without the structure around it.
Landon had a port surgically placed and underwent 8 months of chemotherapy. During this time we spent most of our time at Children's hospital in Omaha and were blessed with every support staff we encountered. We finished chemo just in time to celebrate Landon's First birthday!
Landon has had two complete skull reconstruction surgeries, 4-5 eye or eyelid surgeries and he continues to patch for 4-6 hours every day.
He has been scheduled to have one more reconstruction this next summer which will hopefully be our last. They will be placing a titanium plate in Landon's head that will hopefully last him into adulthood.
We praise God for his provision through this entire journey and cannot express our gratitude we have for Children's hospital and all of the awesome students who help raise funds for Children's miracle network!