June 19, 2007 - an update

Not much new to share in the cancer realm today. Keira will go in tomorrow to be injected with a radioactive medication that will be taken up by any remaining active tumor cells. In order for the tumor to have time to take the medicine up, she will go back on Thursday to be imaged. She has to undergo general anesthesia for this since she has to be perfectly still for 2-3 hours. While she is under anesthesia, they hope to be able to do another set of bone marrow biopsies. They will take samples from both of her hips and examine them for tumor cells. We will then go back Friday to have labwork done and find out preliminary results on the scan she had Thursday (MIBG scan) and part of the bone marrow biopsy. All this to say, we will likely not know much until Friday.

After that, we will return the following Wednesday ( 6/27/07) for an MRI. This is to be able to get a more clear picture of what the tumor in her chest looks like compared to what it did before. The MIBG scan is very fuzzy and looks like a bunch of dots, where an MRI looks more like a photograph. The MRI will be what they will use to decide if surgery is an option at this time. We are obviously praying that all the cancer will be gone, and we won't have to undergo any further treatment, but if that is not the case, it is likely that we won't know what the next step will be until late next week, or even the first week in July. The waiting remains very difficult.

On an up note, Keira has had a wonderful week. Saturday night she surprised us all by walking - not just a step - but across the entire room. We got all excited and she continued to walk around the rest of the night like it was no big deal. Well, evidently it was a one night only show. She is back to needing a hand to hold and will take a single step on her own before converting her mode of travel to a crawl. Honestly this is ok with us. With chemo and her platelets becoming low, if she wants to wait to walk until she is at little risk of falling, that's not such a bad thing!

We will enter a new post as soon as we have something to report. Thank you for your continued prayers, e-mails and cards. You cannot know how much they mean to us.

Jason, Erin, and Keira Grace