Sam and Elizabeth during our visit to the New Orleans wildlife preserve. We got to see & feed giraffes, antelope, camels and long-horn cows.
Mmmm... chocolate Easter bunny is the best!
Sam looks very happy about this birthday gift! I can almost hear him say "cool!"
Ben's first cello recital! He played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with his first-year group.Just before our New Orleans trip, we talked to quite a few doctors to discuss Sarah's pituitary growth: her neurosurgeon & radio-onc at Univ. of Chicago, her oncologist and a radio-onc doctor at Northwest Community hospital where she received radiation treatment. After learning that all of them recommended conventional surgery vs. stereotactic radio-surgery (when it is required due to continued growth or symptoms), Sarah has come around to this point of view now.
The plan is to get another brain MRI and also a liver MRI to see how the Taxol-Carboplatin is working and then go from there. She gets the MRIs tomorrow (Friday) and we should have results on Monday when she goes in for Taxol-Carbo treatment #5. If her liver tumor is larger (no please no), we may very well end up switching her to a different chemo -- so, Monday is a bit of an unknown. If her pituitary growth has growth some more, then she may also end up getting the pituitary surgery as soon as we can schedule it. Otherwise, she'll likely wait until there is either significant growth or there are further symptoms (not all the docs agree that her headache two weeks ago was caused by the pituitary growth) . We don't know what else could have caused it, but it has not come back even after coming off the Decadron. It is still possible that the growth is a benign "adenoma" - in that case the surgery could be all that is needed to reduce the growth's size with no follow-on treatment required except potentially hormone replacement drugs (if any pituitary function is lost)
We're hoping that Taxol-Carbo has done some good for her liver mets. That will be answered Monday, and we know that these things are very unpredictable, so we aren't going in with any expectations one way or the other.
4 comments:
We'll keep you in our prayers. Cassie played violin for a number of years and I still remember her Twinkle recital. Her teacher loved using that song for teaching all kinds of different things. :-)
We continue to keep you in our good thoughts and appreciate all the updates!
I'll be thinking of you all weekend as I spend untold hours at the local rodeo venue waiting around to cast my ballot for Barak. I really hope you have good news- Sharon
Good to see Ben starting with music! I'm sure you are both so proud at his concerts, although at this stage it probably sounds like a lot of screeching (my own dad endured countless concerts of mine as a junior band geek, so I can identify!!). Hopefully no pituitary surgery is needed and the Taxol-Carbo is working. sending our best wishes your way
Jennifer and Jeff
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