One more quick update to get you up to speed – Dad ended up seeing a cancer specialist yesterday (the Doctors, Nurses and staff at Barnes have been AMAZING by the way). This Dr. has 42 years of experience specializing in cancer?! Anyway, he suggested my Dad get a full body PET Scan as an alternative full body scan to see if it will help in identifying a source before moving forward with the surgery next Friday.
If the PET Scan reveals a source, the brain tumors would no longer need to be sent to biopsy for testing, so in this case they would still be removed before targeting/treating the source, but it’s likely they would be able to use a different method to remove them (Gamma Knife Radiation or Traditional Radiation or other). The PET scan and the Board meeting will be on Monday, so we will try to give another update re: the final plan after we hear the results on Monday.
In the meantime, thank you for all of the love, thoughts, prayers and encouragement – my family is so blessed to have such an amazing support network of friends and family. We are so thankful for all of you and definitely need the support now more than ever – the next 2 weeks are going to be big weeks for us. Mom and Dad are trying to keep up with all of the voicemails and emails, but it’s been a challenge so please refer people to this blog for updates, etc and keep the prayers and encouragement coming – I know Dad is really going to love reading your comments, jokes and encouraging words on here.
Well I am finally home after spending 2.5 days in New Baden. We are so relieved that everything went well with surgery. We have been praying so hard.
ReplyDeleteI think what we have been most impressed with is Earl's attitude in dealing with all of this & the support of his family & friends.
We will keep checking the blog. Love Art & Jan