Good Morning!

I"LL BE UPDATING HERE THROUGHOUT TUESDAY. SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATES!

8AM Good morning friends and family! We hope that you are still rejoicing this morning after what we are SURE was God's miraculous hand at work during the surgery. Just think, Brady is supposed to be on a ventilator right now in an ICU and he is breathing on his own!!! Amen, Amen, Amen!!! This obviously will shorten his recovery time and give Matt and I so much precious time with him awake!

I came back to the Ronald last night at about 9:30pm. They were still waiting to put Brady into a room, but he was resting comfortably. My wonderful hubby can sleep pretty much anywhere, so he stayed last night. I just got word that Brady did pretty well all night. He would wake up here and there asking for "mommy or daddy" but Matt said he was pretty easily soothed back to sleep. We are hoping to hear more from the doctors today.

Areas for prayer as we continue on:
1. Praise!!! Thank you Jesus for showing us Your awesome power and exceeding all expectation in regards to the surgery. Thank you for guiding the surgeons and for making it possible to remove even part of the spinal tumor.
2. Pray that Brady's pain will be well managed as they want him to try and move around today.
3. Pray that Brady will still free of infection and any other post surgical complications.
4. We continue to pray for complete healing from cancer. There will be tests upcoming and we know that our journey is not over. Certainly we pray with the full belief that God can make anything possible!

Matt and I can't tell you the peace that we had yesterday during the surgery. Knowing that SO many are praying is a powerful feeling and God certainly was faithful in easing our burden as we continually laid them down to Him. Thank you all for being right here with us even though so far away:)

11AM I put two pictures up of Brady at the top of this post. The first is from right now. You can see the chest tube coming out on the left. He is also getting a blood transfusion which you can see coming in on the right. He is resting comfortably and they are hoping to get him up when his lunch arrives. He has had a few crackers and some juice. When he wakes up he comments on what he sees and is very aware. Matt just took a walk back to the Ronald to shower and change. He's hoping to get back before the Dr. L stops in.

5:30 What an afternoon. We got transferred up to the regular pediatric unit on the 9th floor. Within 5 minutes of being in the room I realized our "roommate" was not a mentally stable person. Let's just say we are in a new room now and apparently not the first people to be moved out of that person's room. Our new roommate is very nice, our room is very comfortable, and we feel much better about things. Brady has been up and down today. He is in pain when we have to move him or change his dressing. It is hard to pick him up as usual because his incision is on his side, so putting your hands under his arm to hold him is painful. An area of prayer is for Brady's right eye. It appears swollen and saggy a little. One risk of this type of surgery is Horner's Syndrome which can affect your eye. We just have to kind of wait and watch it. This syndrome isn't a major deal, but also doesn't always resolve on it's own. Dr. L came in and saw Brady and told us that the chest tube and catheter will likely come out tomorrow. He also said we might be able to get home by the end of the week. My heart jumped at the thought of celebrating Easter will all 4 of my little bunnies together:)

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.

Time to Get Started

We have made the difficult decision to go ahead with the chemo option followed by surgery. After A LOT of discussion and praying, we feel peace about it. We feel like we are using both methods conservatively, yet to their best potential. By doing chemo we will hopefully be able to shrink the tumor, therefore improving the chance for successful surgery. A few people have asked us, why not surgery first, then chemo. Brady's tumor involves his spinal cord, so doing surgery first would be very invasive and potentially dangerous. The goal for using chemo first is to reduce the tumor size, making it more easily removed via surgery later. Another big factor in our choice was the thought that chemo works on the whole body with the goal of killing cancer wherever it may be hiding. Surgery is localized...what if something is missed.

Chemo will start tonight after dinner. This has been the hardest decision of our lives. There is no crystal ball here, no sure thing. We made the most informed decision that we could given the information that we were given. This is where our faith comes in. Despite the circumstances we face, despite our fear, despite everything...God is holding us all in the palm of His hand. We have heard from so many people since having the triplets "God will never give you more than you can handle." It is a nice thought, but I truly think that this situation is more than WE can handle. I hope that our family is daily living proof, that in our darkest hours, we can trust God alone to get us through. It is never more than HE can handle!