Oncology Meeting

These are the praises that we are excited about this morning:

Dave can drink!!!!! Whoo hoo!! He has had almost a cup of apple juice:)

He is able to get up with lots of help to go potty.

We received a call this morning that the Hokie Bird and two cheerleaders are coming to visit this Saturday on their way to the big game. We are all excited and I am going to wash our Hokie gear to wear for the visit!! Thankfully Uncle Chad brought him a Hokie jersey that we will put on him. Go Hokies!!!!

The meeting went okay with the oncologist. She has been so kind to us and we really trust and respect her. She feels that between our faith and David's spunk that we will all get through this fine.

I will admit that the meeting was really hard on me. She has to give us a lot of information and frankly a lot of it was very hard to hear. He has Stage four cancer which means that he is high risk due to the fact that his cancer has metastasized already into his lungs.

The first step is to do 6 weeks of chemotherapy. After that round of chemo they will do another scan on his lungs and we pray and believe that the lung lesions will be gone at that time. If they are then he will continue with the same course of chemo for about 8 months.

If the lesions do not respond to the chemo then after the six weeks he will start a different course of treatment and possibly have to undergo radiation on the chest. Radiation is tricky in terms of long term exposure to radiation on his heart.

Three days ago she shared that Wilm's has a favorable outcome in about 70-75% of the cases. The other day that sounded great when we were getting all this awful and scary information. Today I was scared, tired, and worn out and instead of thinking positively I flipped it around that there is a 25% chance I could lose this baby.

The oncologist really must give us all this type of information and I just got so scared and overwhelmed. After our meeting I stepped out to collect myself and she followed me. She hugged on me and really made me feel better. She said that this type of cancer is very amenable to treatment and that we have a strong faith. She feels very good about David's long term outcome. This Momma wanted to hear that there is a 100% chance of survival and she could not give that to me this morning.

So our first step is to get this lymphatic fluid to stop now. That is going to prolong our hospital stay and frankly we are worn out and our home looks so appealing right now. I hate that our kiddos are all spread around but I know that they are in excellent hands.

Then we will start our first round of chemo and pray so hard that David will not suffer from some of those hard and sad side effects of the chemo. We will come here to UVA once a week for 6 weeks for his treatments. Then they will do a CT scan and check those lesions to see if the chemo has worked. We need all prayer warriors all over that prayer request.

I thought this meeting this morning would be a pep rally kind of thing, but facing those hard and cold facts such as survival rates, chemo side effects, etc.. is really hard to hear. Who ever wants to sit down with a pediatric oncologist and discuss the chances that your child will live to see their 21st birthday?

As sad and down as I am about this I am holding onto the hope that she gave us. She really believes that David is going to do well due to his spunk and spirit, our faith, and you all our prayer warriors. This Momma is missing normal life and is overwhelemed about the idea that our next 8ish months are going to be intense and hard.

But despite how hard and gut-wrenching this is my faith has never been stronger. Mike and I have both seen first hand that God is sustaining us each and every moment. We both felt God's presence and mercy during David's marathon surgery. We feel him now and see that he is working in this situation. We know that he has David in the palm of his hand.