I just got an email from our oncologist (complete with smiley face) with an updated report from the radiologist reviewing Austin’s scans. She was able to go back and find some older chest CTs that had been done without sedation and she determined that these two tiny nodules have been there as far back as […]
So, yesterday was pretty good. As we’ve all had to learn (the hard way), nothing in this game is ever straightforward, there are always always nuances. First, the good stuff: His kidney and liver are unchanged. The spot on the liver is still there; it’s still hard to see clearly (visible in some planes but […]
Last Tuesday, we went to the Natural History Museum and I took some photos of the boys sitting on the stone bear outside, right where we’d taken pictures last March. Check out the difference: More hair, same big smiles To see these images of my boys sitting in the exact same spot, just eight months […]
Braedan brought home his school pictures yesterday: images of a widely grinning boy, standing happily amidst friends and peers who adore and admire him. He has been doing fantastically. I think some of his struggles in August and September may have just been about adjusting to the start of school, due in part to the strong […]
Aw shucks, thanks everyone. It was a pretty incredible story, especially the fact that I first wrote about that license plate on the CarePage a full five months after the last time I’d seen it and then it was spotted again by friends within one week(Make sure you read the comment from Linda Yonkers on […]
Last Friday I received a email from Writer’s Digest informing me that an essay I submitted in their annual writing competition had placed. Not like first place or anything, but 60th in the memoir category. Now I know 60th doesn’t sound like much but last year there were 14,000 entrants so placing at all is […]
Like I said, we’ve got no time for cancer. Everything went well yesterday. The ultrasound showed no changes to his kidney or liver. Sigh of relief for that. We are almost six months out from the end of treatment, if you can believe it. One quarter of the way there. There — that magic date […]
Another month has gone by and tomorrow Austin has yet another ultrasound. He’ll get to go to school in the morning and then we’ll head straight down for labs and tests to check on the liver and, of course, our organ of choice — the kidney. I’m assuming things will be fine but I have […]
This past Tuesday, I had another opportunity, like last year, to speak to a class of first-year med students at Case. It was part of their weekly “touchy-feely” seminar, the class that reminds them why they chose to become doctors in the first place. The biggest message (I hope) I sent was that patients are whole people. […]
Austin’s To Do list from yesterday: Join cousin’s soccer team, follow cousin around field in the opposite direction of ball for entire game … Check. Make pirate hats with my pals at my birthday party … Check. Enjoy pirate ship cake (and give kudos to Mommy for not letting anything fall apart before I got to […]