Landon LaBine

Landon’s story written by his mom Becky.

On February 12th 2013, Landon was diagnosed with a grade 1 Pilocyctic Astrocytoma at the age of 2. This tumor was embedded in his brain stem. Landon underwent surgery on February 26th, 2013 at the Children's Hospital in St. Paul, MN to attempt to remove the tumor. During this surgery Landon’s neurosurgeon Dr. Petronio, was able to remove 50% of the tumor.

One week after Landon had this 13-hour brain surgery, Landon went back in for another surgery. This surgery was to place a port and catheter in his chest. This was done so that he could start to receive chemotherapy treatments. Landon began his 1st Chemo treatment of Carboplatin and vincristine the same day they placed the port. Landon finished his first round of chemotherapy treatment, & at the time we had hoped would be his last treatment on April 25th, 2014. During those 15 months of treatment Landon had many obstacles to overcome. Landon had completely lost the ability to use his right side of his body (Right Side palsy). He did weekly therapy for Speech, Occupational Therapy, & Physical therapy to regain his strength back. He worked hard every single day always pushing himself just that little bit more and he eventually regained everything back on his right side. In 2015 Landon was discharged from all therapy and he was considered in remission.

We had gone 6 months with stable scans, but on September 1st, 2016, 16 months since Landon’s last chemo treatment our nightmare returned. Landon’s tumor regrew and he started back on chemotherapy treatments of Irinotecan and avastin immediately. Landon finished up another 12 months of chemotherapy treatment which he went to every other Friday until September 25th, 2017. Landon rang the bell that day signifying that he had won his battle with cancer. On December 28th, 2017 on a routine rescan MRI, the results came back showing us slight growth yet again. We held out hoping that it would stabilize but that was not the case.

On September 11th, 2018 Landon began his 3rd fight with this brain tumor. This round we used Mekinist and Temodar which were both pills he took at home. We used this treatment until December 2018 and at that time we discontinued as the tumor was still progressing. We then switched to using Vinorelbine chemotherapy and we used that till February 2019. The MRI scans at the time were obvious that these treatments were not working at all.

In February 2019 we made the decision to operate again on the tumor. On March 15th, 2019 Landon underwent a surgery at Children’s Hospital of MN St. Paul campus using L.I.T.T. (Laser interstitial thermal therapy) The surgery was successful and Dr. Petronio was able to ablate 90% of Landon’s tumor. Dr. Petronio was also able to get a couple biopsies of the tumor so we will now wait for those to come back and hopefully find a more targeted treatment to combat Landon’s tumor. Landon has some right-side weakness following the surgery, but we are confident he will have that strength back in no time at all.

There have been so many advances in the testing and medical treatment in just the 6 years that we have been battling. The laser surgery was not even in the USA 6 years ago and now we have it right here at Children's hospital in Minnesota. The advances in testing have greatly changed and they are able to test for more mutations than we could 6 years ago, also opening up a huge window for us for more treatment options now.