Good...no, FANTASTIC news from New York

With Lots of options on the table, from clinical Chemo trials to image guided Radiation to Surgery by some of the worlds finest, our spirits were lifted. Deep down we knew that all would eventually end up OK. The "how" was the missing piece. Through a lot of faith and prayers by more people than I can count, The Lord has answered our prayers. Sometimes we just need to take the leap of faith and move forward not knowing beforehand what we should do. Once we take action in a direction that we feel guided to it is then that we see the blessings unfold, an they have.
In speaking to Dr. Yamada we were informed that we needed to get some extra scans done so they could see exactly what they wanted to see. He mentioned that his initial impressions were that we would be doing radiation possibly assisted by some surgery to gain better margins around the spinal cord. Surgery was something I thought might happen, and I had come to terms with that. The best part was that we actually had a doctor that agreed there was something we could do to take care of this Cancer.

Our first meeting started at about 8:30am we did a lot of waiting and then we did more waiting at each doctors office. I believe that is something that is a requirement, you go to a doctors office, you wait, it seems that this is the same all over from one coast to another. No fun at all.

After the MRI we went back over to Dr. Yamada's office and waited to hear what he thought about the new images. He came in and told us that he thought we would have no problems doing more radiation, he said that after looking at the reports of my previous radiation treatments we still had room to work in terms of dosing. He mentioned that referencing the PET scan I had taken in SLC, the area of the tumor that was active was further away from the spinal cord, so the highest doses would not affect the cord directly, just the lower doses. Just after he asked us if we had any further questions and we were getting ready to leave, Dr Bilsky, the Neurosurgeon came down and wanted to see the scans too. Both of them consulted and spent about 15 mins looking over the scans, once finished they both came back to speak to us. Even though the actual Tumor board meets on Thursday mornings and it was only Tuesday, the two of them said that they felt like we could easily do this using radiation only, without the need for any surgery!

Wow, My spirits were boosted. My eyes started watering and I could barely hold back the emotion. In those words, All the prayers and thoughts offered in my behalf would not go unheard. The Tumor board will be the final word on Thursday and we would find out more about the schedule then.