Scan Updates

 It was a long couple days of scans to start the year. Doing it right after the holidays (and loads of driving) was probably helpful to curb some of the "scanxiety" that typically accompanies these things, though. Here's a quick update on what they found.

Good news:

• The bone scan showed no new lesions and decreased activity on the lesions that are there (femurs, hips, spine, ribs, and shoulder blades).
• The 2 spots that were treated on my brain (1 on the brain, 1 on the skull) with the GAMMA knife procedure months ago shrunk and have disappeared. That procedure was about 6 months ago.
• The CT scans of my chest and abdomen showed no new tumors and the kidney tumor shrunk a little more. It's new measurements are 5.0 x 5.1 x 6.3 cm. It was over 10 cm at the largest.

Bad news (the presence of "good" news should've been a hint that this section was coming):

• The brain scan revealed 2 new spots on my brain. One is on the brain stem, which is less than ideal. Both are small and the doctor is confident that the GAMMA knife will do the trick like it did the first time around. He also said this can happen sometimes and it's possible that these spots were there before but too small to see. He was encouraging and optimistic (Dr. Ware sets the bedside manner bar extremely high).

It's not fun to learn of new spots on your brain. However, it's far from the worst bad news we could've received. We are bummed but still feeling more optimistic than pessimistic after this round of scans. Our final week in New Orleans just got a little more complicated.

Prayer Requests

1. One of those appointments next week is for our oldest, Eli. He has a full body MRI on Tuesday as part of his early monitoring since he has the same gene mutation that I have. It'll be a long scan so he'll be sedated for it. Please pray for him and us that day.
2. I have my GI infusion and my first immunotherapy infusion since August on Thursday (1/11). The other 2 rounds of immunotherapy wiped me out for a couple of days after. It would be nice to avoid some of that this time around because....
3. We are pulling out of New Orleans with a moving truck next Saturday (1/13). Between now and then, we have 7 doctors appointments and a lot of packing to do. And lots of hugs and "see ya laters" to give out. It's going to be a heavy week. Thankfully, Bekah's parents are coming to town to help with kiddos and the move. We also have some movers coming to help load the truck since I'm not as much help as I used to be in that regard.
4. The "busy-ness" of next week will make it easy to run from the emotions Bekah wrote about the other day. We don't want to close this chapter of our lives poorly by doing that. Pray we'd have the strength to finish well here in New Orleans, please.

That's all I've got for you. Thanks for stopping by.

Ready, break!