Poor baby, poor mom, poor family.  What a horrible thing to have to deal
with -- except that at least some astrocytomas have a very high cure rate.
I have a former graduate student finishing up his chemo following surgery
for a large astrocytoma, and he is doing very very well.

This mom will have a new baby in 5 months, right?  At that time, she can
certainly pump and provide breast milk for the 3 year old.  My student's
experience with astrocytoma chemotherapy is that it was not nearly as
devastating to his gastrointestinal tract as the standard chemo for breast
cancer.  Each different kind of cancer has its own "cocktail" of
chemotherapy drugs, and some are murder (literally) on the GI tract, while
others are relatively mild.  So this kid may do fine on chemo, but I would
certainly encourage the mother to pump while the newborn nurses and give the
'other side milk' to the toddler.

Poor baby.  :(

Kathy Dettwyler
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