Gamma knife...check!

Gamma knife surgery is completed and went ok today. Dad is home and feeling as good as can be expected - the doctors discovered a second BB sized tumor near the site of his left craniotomy, so they "targeted" both tumors. What the gamma knife does is changes the DNA of the tumor so the cancer cells stop duplicating or growing, then (if successful) the body takes over and erodes the tumor or turns it to dead tissue - crazy! ...thank goodness for advances in technology. Because the tumors were small, they feel one gamma knife surgery should take care of them, but we will not know for sure until his next MRI which will be in 3 months.

Big BIG prayers the whole body scans are clear - they are scheduled for this Thursday and we hope to know the results right away on Thursday, but we'll see. The doctors still feel the brain tumors are developing from cancer cells traveling through the blood from another source within the body that for some reason cannot (or at least hasn't been able to be in the past) detected on whole body PET scans. We are ok with this - in most cases at the point where you have tumors in the brain, the cancer has already infected many areas within the body. Dad falls in a rare 5% where he does/has not had any visible signs of cancer in any other parts of his body. Thankfully these tumors were very small and hopefully the whole body scans are clear. We will see on Thursday - all is weighing on this whole body scan. Keep those prayers coming!!!

In the meantime, Dad's hair is really growing back - here is a photo of his "battle wounds" from today: