There's No Place Like Home

After 8 days away from the girls and home, we made it back to Austin today. It has been a really hard recovery, but gets a little better everyday. As you read from Eric's update, my surgeons said the resection was a huge success. Dr. Almeda called this morning to give me the path results that we had been waiting on. The tumor had not invaded my lymph, vascular, or neural regions and they believe it is 100 percent gone. This was such a relief and also explained why I was not having any symptoms. The next step is to recover from the resection and decide whether or not to do chemo. Radiation is not necessary because there is no tumor to target. Chemo would be systemic since again there is no longer a tumor to target. Chemo would be more of a preventative measure at this point.

Dr. Almeda and Dr. Chadha, my oncologist, are undecided on how to move forward. They were very straight up with me and said they do not know of anyone with this cancer who has been able to have a successful resection and that it not have invaded other body systems. So there are no studies to say whether a follow up chemo treatment is beneficial. Dr. Almeda said, "This is a miracle." You do not hear that from the medical community very often.

We are very thankful to have this outcome but know we still have a long road ahead. I can not say enough good things about my surgeon. He was wonderful in every way: emotionally, physically, technically, etc.