CHRISTIAN SENSE
BY TOM SMIKOSKI
A
publication devoted to making sense out of the twenty-first
century.
DISAPPEARING TUMOR
By: KELLY RUANE (Staff writer for Monroeville's Time's Express Star -
http://www.timesexpressstar.com/)
Logan Knupp of Monroeville just celebrated his fifth birthday, despite
the fact experts told his parents not to plan his first. Logan's mother,
Lisa, told her boss she had felt a nudge from God to take three years off
from teaching at Cheswick Christian Academy just before her family's lives
were turned upside-down for nearly that exact amount of time.
During Lisa's newfound time with her 8-month-old baby, she became
suspicious of some of Logan's odd behaviors. He was having trouble
sitting up and one of his eyes seemed to be moving in a bizarre direction,
toward its inner corner.
The Knupps' pediatrician dismissed Lisa's concerns
and said Logan was fine, but decided to send the family to a highly regarded
ophthalmologist for his eye problem and to extinguish their worries.
To Lisa's surprise, Logan was able to get an appointment with the eye doctor
the next day.
"It usually would take weeks to get an appointment with this
kind of specialist," Lisa says. "This is just one way that we know God
played the biggest part in Logan's situation."
The eye specialist told
the Knupps he didn't think there was anything wrong, but Lisa's fears
persisted. So the eye doctor scheduled Logan to have an MRI four weeks
later.
The day after Logan's eye appointment, the Knupps received a call
from Children's Hospital saying it had a cancellation and Logan could
come in that evening for the test.
The test results proved a mother's
intuition is almost always right. Instead of finding a weak eye muscle,
the test revealed a tumor the size of a ping-pong ball at the base of
little Logan's brain.
"'Your baby is very sick' was the first thing the
doctor said to us," Lisa recalls. "He told us that he had been doing this
long enough to know it was probably cancer and we couldn't leave the
hospital."
The baby was prepped for surgery while his parents prayed
and contacted family members to let them know the devastating results.
Ninety-eight percent of the tumor was successfully re-moved. Logan's
tumor had not rooted itself in his brain; luckily, it had just been
laying on the surface.
To play it safe, the doctors wanted another test
done to check Logan's spine. The Knupps' faith would once again be tested.
The tumor had grown like ivy around Logan's spine. The doctors told Allen
Knupp and his wife the outlook was grim and Logan probably wouldn't make it
to his first birthday.
The Knupps say the doctors couldn't figure out what
type of cancer Logan had or what the next step in his treatment should be.
The family was given a three-day pass to go home to be with their older
son, Tyler, who was 3 at the time, while Logan's biopsy was sent to five
of the top labs in the country in hope of getting some answers.
While at
home, the Knupps continued to pray and left Logan in God's hands. They also
received a visit from a grandmother of one of Lisa's students, who shared
her Pentecostal faith.
She told the distraught family that God had shown
her an axe shape at the bottom of Logan's spine, saying she felt God's work
had been finished and he had laid down his axe.
The Knupps weren't sure
what the woman's vision was supposed to mean, but they would find out weeks
later.
The labs sent back inconclusive reports. Logan was about to start
heavy chemotherapy treatments for the tumor and his parents were going to
continue long, sleepless nights in the hospital by their baby's side.
Logan's case called for one year of treatment.
Chemo treatments started
on Monday morning and finished on Sunday evening, every two weeks. Logan
was into his second round of treatment when the Knupps were hit with
another surprise.
It was a month after the initial diagnosis and Logan was
scheduled to have an MRI to check the progression of the tumor.
The
radiologist came out after reading the results and told the family they
could go home. The Knupps were a little confused, because they knew they
had to stay the rest of that week for the chemo treatments.
They questioned
the radiologist, explaining about the tumor and saying they were sure they
needed to stay.
The radiologist, equally surprised as the Knupps, said,
"What tumor? Your son is fine."
No one was sure what to think at that
moment.
The radiologist asked permission from the parents to get the
results from the last scan to compare the two.
Speechlessness overcame
everyone. Indeed, there was no tumor anywhere.
The results from the more
recent scan revealed only a dark shadow at the bottom of the baby's spine.
God had laid down his axe after cutting Logan's tumor away, according to
the Knupps.
A team of doctors re-viewed the results. The Knupps say no
one could give an explanation of how the tumor, which was supposed to
take Logan's life, had disappeared.
Logan continued low-dose chemo
treatment as follow-up until his mother decided she wanted it to stop.
She and Logan's doctor had a conflict on the issue of treatment.
The
doctor wanted to keep Logan on an experimental plan of chemo treatments,
but Lisa says God was telling her to put it to an end.
A new
neuro-oncologist had just started at Children's when Lisa asked for the
treatment to be stopped. One day, while making rounds, the new doctor told
the Knupps she didn't see any reason to continue the chemo.
After hearing
her opinion, Lisa and Allen immediately called to file papers to make her
Logan's new doctor. Upon this doctor's further review of the case, she told
the family that Logan had a glioma, a rare form of cancer generally found
in young children.
The Knupps say there was no cure for what their son had,
only treatment to help control it.
"The doctor told us we were looking at
a miracle from God," Lisa says.
Logan celebrated his fifth birthday in
January and has had no reoccurrence of any tumors. His doctors say it is
unlikely a tumor will return.
"We want people to hear our story, not to
boast that our child was healed, but to offer hope to others that God still
performs miracles," Allen Knupp says.
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