Mayo results

First of all, thanks for your prayers this week, we could really feel them.  It was quite a process getting ready to leave as Wesley was throwing up tues night, and Whitley was throwing up we morning, and Lexi threw up at M&D Stollers after we left.  I feel a little funny today myself but thankfully made it through the scans without issue.

The scans look good.  The tumors are either stable or slightly shrinking from the last scans.  The unexplainable thing is the symptoms I am having.  In the lumbar area of the scan, Dr Hammack sees a very faint shadow on the nerve roots.  She's wondering if this could be causing the walking problem.

The last week I'm having symptoms in my tongue as well, it's harder to chew and I've bit my tongue every now and then.  She doesn't see anything on the scans that would suggest this.  She is wondering if there is microscopic disease that she can't see on the scan.

She is suggesting that I start on a second drug in addition to the Avastin.  Temodar is the name of it, and it is an oral pill.  Supposedly it is low in side effects.  We haven't talked about it specifically yet but I assume we will do that.

Interestingly, a couple weeks ago when we scheduled this appt, I had a dream that we were meeting with a group of doctors and they recommended that I start on Temodar.  I don't have many dreams so it must not have been a coincidence.

We could tell that dr Hammack is really surprised by how well I am doing.  She again called it a miracle.  Thanks to all of you for your prayers, theres nothing else to attribute it to.

So while it's definitely not the best news we could have hoped for, it was better than we expected and we are thankful for that.

Derek & Leann