A little over two years ago we found out that Eric had a giant cell tumor in the head of his femur.  A surgery was quickly scheduled to have the tumor removed.  Eric recovered quickly, has been relatively pain free, and seems to be pretty proud of the metal collection he has in his hip.

A couple of months ago at his two year follow-up his doctor noticed that something was once again happening at the same location in his femur.  The concern was that either the giant cell tumor had returned or some of the bone had died.  Yesterday Eric had another round of x-rays done to see if there had been any growth.  They showed no change.  If it had been a giant cell tumor, the doctor would have expected to see growth.  Dr. W still hasn't completely ruled out the tumor as a possibility, but he is definitely thinking it looks more like bone death.

Something to know about bone death is that after the initial insult that causes the death, the area remains static.  Therefore there is no anticipation that this area in his femur will grow.  Sounds good, right?  BUT, the bone tissue in the damaged spot will continue to soften.  It could likely soften to the point that the head of Eric's femur collapses.  If this happens he will have to have a hip replacement which would put a limit on him physically for the rest of his life.  Plus, hip replacements don't last forever.

So Eric has a couple of options: 

1. He can continue to have the area monitored by x-rays every few months.  I believe this is mainly to watch for growth, indicating that it is the tumor and not bone death.  If at any point he experiences pain in his hip he would need to go in to see if the head has collapsed.  There is no guarantee that it will collapse, but there is not guarantee that it won't.
2. He can opt for surgery now in an effort to prevent a collapse and save his hip.  It would require removal of some of the metal and all of the bone cement that is in there from the last surgery.  You can imagine how difficult it would be to remove cement and evidently it's trickier in the top of the femur (as opposed to around the knee joint) since the area to work in is narrower.  If something does not go as planned during the surgery, Eric would be sewn up, given the opportunity to recover, and then talks would begin about a hip replacement.

As of now surgery seems like the best option.  It beats living in fear that the head could collapse.  The biggest issue for me with the surgery is that it is not routine.  You have to understand that Eric is literally "one in a million" for simply having had a giant cell tumor.  Then he's even more unique for having had it in the upper part of his femur.  It usually occurs around knee joints.  His doctor is amazing, but admits that he has concerns about the difficulty of removing the cement in this next surgery.  He says if Eric opts for surgery he will do everything he can to save his hip.

Please pray for us as we make the decision whether or not to go ahead with the surgery.  Eric's doctor is giving us all of the information he has and leaving the ultimate decision up to us.