Cat Scan Day

Today was a good day. I won't bore you with the details but will say that after spending 8 straight hours at Children's Hospital... it was a very good day. Ashley's cat scan revealed the tumor has not spread through out her body. Its in her liver only. We don't have all the blood work back yet so there is a chance it could be in her blood but its not in her kidneys. Her preliminary bloodwork looked normal but we're waiting for a couple more results. Yahoo! Here's the bottom line. NO BIOPSY! Yahoo! It turns out that although the tumor is rather large, the surgeons are confident they can extract the entire tumor sometime this week. WHEW! This news surpassed our expectations. We thought there would first be a biopsy, then determine the best extraction method. We were also told that the tumor might be too large and they may do 2 chemo rounds first, then another CT scan, then a biopsy. We're very happy this is not the case. And there is a chance its not cancer, unlikely but a slight chance. We should have more blood work results tomorrow. Once they extract the turmor it will take a couple days for the lab to analyze it. Once analyzed, then they'll determine what/when chemo to do. She'll probably be in the hospital for a week and will have a large V shaped incision covering her entire lower abdominal cavity. (I'm going to take LOTS of photo's of her tummy before surgery so she'll know what it use to look like.)

If you want details of our day... here they are. 9:30 arrive at childrens. 11 finally in to begin the CT process, but were disapointed that we were not better informed of details. Ashley had to drink 2-3 ozs of this fluid and then wait two more hours before they would sedate her for a CT scan. VERY FRUSTRATING! I hadn't fed her since 5:12 am and she was really hungry, really fussy and really tired. Finally around 2 pm she was sedated and I had the unusual experience of putting my child to sleep by holding a mask of gas to her face. It took about 15 seconds. I lay her down on the table and we kissed her and said "you'll be fine". This was the most emotional part of the day for me. Just seeing all the medical personnel in the room and that HUGE tire shaped machine was very intimidating. The CT was FAST. She was back in the room by 2:20 and at 2:30 woke up. She had leads on her chest, an SpO2 sensor, NIBP and an IV in her left hand. Once she woke the nurses grabbed her quickly off the crib and pulled off the monitoring gear. I was finally able to deflate my now inflamed to a size ZZZ breasts. Yahoo! INSTANT relief. She fell asleep again and stayed asleep until 5:30. WHICH WAS AWESOME! Because numerous surgeons and oncology personnell had to examine her and take more blood from the IV still in her hand. We were able to get such a good exam and had such an easy time talking with the Doc's due to her slumber. Okay. Today was a good day for me. I think for Tony too. I'll sign off now and update you more when I get more. Thanks for all your well wishes, they're working! -- April