We have a plan

We had a big meeting this morning--bigger than we expected. Drs. Shafron, Abella, and Williams (Abella's new partner), Heidi the social worker from BDMC, and Debbie from Child Life, who also brought along her intern.

The general consensus is that what we see on the MRI and PET scans is probably recurrent tumor. There is still a chance that it is radiation necrosis, but at this point the only way to be sure is to do surgery. If Dr. Shafron discovers it is not tumor then we know for sure. If it is tumor, it needs to come out anyway.

The surprise came from Dr. Abella, who said there is still a possiblity that we can get rid of the cancer if we do a full bone marrow transplant. Her chemotherapy previously did not kill off all of her bone marrow. It would be an autologous transplant, because we have enough of her own stem cells left from her previous treatments.

There's a lot more to write about all the possible transplant details--as those become clear in the next few days we will keep you posted.

So as of right now she is scheduled for surgery on Friday at 9:00 AM. It will be at Phoenix Children's Hospital. That's a new wrinkle, due to scheduling issues. If we did it at BDMC we would have to wait at least a week, and we didn't want to wait.

So there's lots to pray for--pray her surgery will go at least as well as it has gone in the past. PLEASE pray we will discover that this is just radiation necrosis, and not new tumor growth. Pray for all the little details (being at a different facility, insurance company issues, me juggling work again, etc.) And pray for our other kids. Josiah knows the whole story, and Daniel and Elizabeth have caught on that something is wrong. They need God's peace as much as the rest of us.