A Better Day

We arrived our appointments at 9am. We waited from 9 until 10:45 and then got to see Dr. Laquaglia in between his two surgeries for the day. He basically just started describing the surgery. Within the first minute I heard his say "major, life-threatening surgery." That is the scary part... He will be accessing the tumor from Brady's right side, without having to collapse his lung. The tumor encompasses Brady's aorta as well many nerves to the spine. For that reason they will be monitoring his neural activity with stimulators throughout the procedure. There is a risk for paralysis, but Dr. L said that he has never had it happen. He does about 100 of these types of surgeries a year, 10 of which are chest tumors, and 5 of those ten are like Brady's. The neurosurgeon will come in during the surgery to see if there is anything he can do to get to the small portion left in the spine, but it is not likely. Dr. L said that the small part in the spinal column could just kind of shrivel up at some point after surgery, we might have to do another surgery, or they could decide to just leave it there and watch it. We were very satisfied with this meeting. Although it is obvious just how busy this doctor is, he was kind and patient, answering all of our questions despite the fact that he was on his way back into the operating room. I told him that we have many people praying for him. He said, "Have them pray for Brady, not me." I laughed and told him that we pray for Brady and everyone of "his team."

After that meeting we went and had lunch and then got a call on my cell that the neurologist was "waiting for us." Imagine that, we kept them waiting..ha! She was a very nice doctor who just wanted to assess Brady's functioning before the surgery.

After that appointment we decided to walk to Central Park and do the carriage ride. It was a long walk (of course I didn't have sneakers) but a beautiful day! Brady loved riding in the carriage and had fun saying "Hi lady" or "Hi dude" to the people walking by. His bunny ears on top of the baseball hat got him many smiles:) We are now back in the room getting ready to pack up and head to the airport. I'm going to do Brady's flush, dressing change, and get him ready for bed here so we can just pop him into bed when we get home. He is an amazing boy and we have really enjoyed our special time with him.