One little dot makes all the difference

This is GREAT news all because of one little dot ! I decided to send you my journal entry of that day. Natalee has had a couple hard days but is doing well now. Day 4 on her chemo alway seems to hit her hard so she was down till Wednesday. :-)




October 28, 2009 Wednesday

Today was our visit with the doctors, we saw Dr. Norwood; Natalee’s blood counts looked good. I wanted to know his opinion as to whether she should go to school with the swine flu being a concern. His reply was that usually he is for kids attending school as much as they can, but with the concerns of the swine flu, he felt it would be a good idea not to go. Since Nat is being tutored and it is more for the social needs she would rather stay home. So Friday will be her last day, which might be until the springtime.
I asked him if I could get the reports on what the sizes of the tumors are. So at the end of our visit, he printed out the report. He copied what was at the beginning and then last week's results. Way back when we had our first MRI and Dr. Olsen gave us the results, she gave us the measurements of 23 cm, 35 cm, 36 cm and 12 cm. With Natalee standing right there I didn’t want to emphasize the size by blurting out "Really 35 CMs?" I was shocked and could not figure out how this possibly could be. We were looking on the monitor, which showed the numbers. They were rather small to read but I still questioned her about them being centimeters not milimeters, and how they possibly fit in her lungs without causing some difficulty. So still back in my head I could not absorb this fact so I wanted to see it written on paper. This was the main reason for the request. Well, as I got in the car and started to look over the report I was totally amazed with what I read. The tumors were 2.3 cm and 3.5 cm and 3.6 cm and 1.2 cm - what a significant difference a digit can make. This means that her largest tumor which we thought was 35 cm (almost 14 inches) is actually 3.5 cm (with the decimal in there) it is just over 1 inch (1.18 inches). I was elated! I immediately called Kent to inform him, I could not hold back my emotions, this makes a world of difference on how my baby can have a quality of life. Everything became silent and it was obvious that Kent was also crying. This is the best news I have had for a long time, and it really changes my hope. I am grateful for that unsettled feeling I had just to make sure. I know God wanted me to have peace in my heart during this unsettled time and I felt it today in a magnificent way. This has been a heavy burden that has been hanging over me since we were told back in August.

So the wonderful news is the 4 largest tumors in her lungs are 1.1 cm, 1.7 cm, 3.1cm and 3.5 cm. She also had numerous fibrous tumors and nothing was mentioned in the report about them. Though this was not brought up by the doctors, in the report it stated that there is some activity in her spine on #1,#2 and #3 vertebrae but her spinal fluid still looks healthy.
Ok, MRI report for her abdomen area: the tumors have not grown! This was the area that showed some growing activity in our last report. I was expecting the worst today and that was a major relief to know it has been halted. So today is a marvelous, wonderful day. All because of one little decimal point, I love math!