The wait is over!

We've been playing phone tag with Sada's neurosurgeon since the MRI on March 11 to find out what he thinks should be the next step, and he finally got back to us today (after realizing someone had put Sada's chart away prematurely). He spoke with another oncologist - and, you guessed it, five out of five oncologists prefer surgery to chemo for treating this type of tumor.

Given that, Dr. Kestle came up with a perfect scenario: he'll schedule her second brain surgery for the 4th of May, which includes a pre-surgical MRI the night before. If the tumors have stayed the same size or shrunk, surgery is immediately cancelled and we go home for another 2-3 months until the next scan. If the tumors grow, during the MRI they will mark her head with dots to make a "GPS map" of where the tumors are so there's no hunting once inside and the surgery will be much faster.

The resident we talked to after the last MRI thought the surgery would be likely scheduled this week, so having an extra month to see if Sada's current "treatment plan" works is marvelous! Two weeks is a short time to show any changes, but 8 weeks gives her body a chance to really fight the tumors. If what she's doing now doesn't work, then surgery will be an absolute necessity in 4 weeks to stop the inevitible hydrocephalus and accompanying problems. But if it does work then we'll know without a doubt that - contrair to popular belief - there is a way to control the tumor growth (which gives a whole new meaning to "light at the end of the tunnel").

Now we have a time-table for Sada to look forward to (which helps unbelieveably with her compliance), a time-out for tired kidneys to recover before having to head back up to Primary Children's for another contrast MRI scan, and time to take a walk or two or ten and smell the hyacinths that are starting to poke up in the front yard. To everything there is a season, and so far Spring is looking lovely.