MRI Update

Harold had a MRI yesterday as a follow-up to his May 10^th gamma knife surgery. The day seemed long as we anticipated the results. Would he be free of new tumors? Would that provide further evidence the immunotherapy treatments are working? How would we feel if there were more tumors? What would that indicate? Would we have reason to celebrate or to brace ourselves for next steps?

  

The answer is somewhere in the middle.

Two very small tumors were found. That’s the bad news. The good news is they are not new (sound familiar). They were tiny specks on the last MRI but were too small to verify they were tumors and not blood vessels. The rest of his brain looks great!

Because the tumors are so small, we have decided to wait a month to do the next gamma knife surgery. This will allow time for any others to show up. Harold will also have a PET scan in the next month which will indicate if the immunotherapy is working on the tumors in the rest of his body.

  

So we’re not celebrating today, but we’re not unduly discouraged either. As much as we wanted a clean scan, new tumors are expected in cases like Harold’s. We've been praying for a miracle and will continue to do so. We had hoped to see evidence of it yesterday . . . 

And perhaps we did. Isn’t it miraculous that a tumor only 2–3 mm in size can be seen and even treated without actually opening up the brain?  That is a modern miracle. Our family has been blessed by many miracles wrought by medicine and by faith. We recognize our Savior's hand in both. That knowledge blesses us with perhaps the greatest miracle of all: peace.