Surgery Update

All went GREAT with Tommy's surgery! AMEN and thank you Jesus!!!! On the 7th, we did all the scans and it was great to see and hear that his lungs are cancer FREE and so does appear the rest of Tommy.

There is one area of his foot, the talus, which did not look "normal". They say not to worry about it and they feel it's a reaction to the chemo. To rule out any fear of cancer, they took three different bone core samples which will be tested over the next week to verify it's not cancer.

The hardest part about that is we have been down the road of being told it's not cancer and only to end up finding it is cancer. I don't want that to be the case again! I'm not allowing this to consume my life and thoughts, as I do not fear or feel it is cancer.

I honestly believe Tommy is cancer FREE and WILL live a LONG and HEALTHY life!

In addition to taking three samples of the talus, they cut out the previous scar and scar tissue. Now Tommy has his foot all wrapped up and isn't able to bear any weight on his toes or foot. They used surgical glue instead of stitches - easier to heal and no worries of needing to remove stitches. The poor child has been through enough hell, that's for sure!

Tommy is in a fair amount of discomfort and pain, although one would rarely know because he has such a great attitude and tolerance.

Daryl and I granted Children's permission to conduct a case study on Tommy and Ewings Sarcoma. We want to help do all that we can for future patients with this horrible disease. It's great to be a part of such a wonderful study and not only at Children's, we also granted the military to do a case study with Tommy's cancer -- good DOES come out of evil and here's proof. Tommy is at a higher risk of his body duplicating the chromosome 11 misfire - for a better lack of LONG terminology -- and Children's hopes to find out from Tommy's tissue, samples and future tests what makes the body do it, as it's still a mystery. We pray to God that Tommy's system doesn't duplicate the misfire and watching him over the next five years with check ups and tests every 90 days will help with the monitoring.

Now, Tommy only has about 10 more chemo treatments to complete and that should be done near February 2008. The chemo is hell! Please, please, please keep the prayers -- it's what gets him through this.

We hope to have tissue results back by next Wednesday and the bone results back by next Friday. There are pictures to be posted of the big event, but will post in a separate update -- getting a little late here. Much thanks for the love and support you all give, God bless my Tommy and Maggie. <><