Y’all Ready for This?

Today (2/19) didn’t go quite as expected, but that’s ok. 🙂
David had his PET/CT scan this morning. We were told that they would have the report written up and given to his doctor before his appointment, which was scheduled for a few hours after the scan. We had a chance to eat breakfast and visit with our Littles before heading back to the cancer center.
David’s immunotherapy is getting pushed back until next week due to him being on a higher dose of steroids. So they will wean him down to a lower dose and then next Wednesday afternoon, they should start it. As David is weaning down on his steroids, the doctor is upping his nerve medicine, because he believes a lot of the pain that David is having is due to nerve damage. David has an appointment set up for next week with the pain management team to help him get the pain better under control.
His scan results were a little hard to believe: In the doctor’s words, “There is no sign of disease, except one spot on his left lung”. He was shocked. So were we. He explained that that’s exactly what the cancer meds that he is on were made to do. They shrink the tumors, so it buys time for immunotherapy to start to work. So basically the tumors are gone and now his body can start fighting the actual cancer through immunotherapy. I’m going to be honest here: I am not usually a skeptical person at all. However, David’s last scan of his spine was done two weeks ago, and there were tumors on his C-spine.. hence why they started radiation right away on that. I asked the Doctor to see the report for myself. Sure enough, the only abnormal things the scan found were 1) some subdural space in his brain, which is likely post surgical (which makes sense, seeing that he just had surgery), 2) The 1.1 cm nodule on his left lung, which was previously 5.1 cm and 3) Some scattered lesions on his spine (which weren’t even significant for them to measure). I’m sure I sounded a little crazy when I asked the Doctor if he was sure the dye was working for David’s scan. Lol. I’m not kidding when I say that all of us in the room were surprised and thrilled. The doctor kept saying things like, “It was in the bone and now we can’t find any traces of it there!” He was so happy, that he called David’s radiation oncologist while we were in the room to go over the results with her. Something he said to her, which we’ve known all along as well, was that when he first saw David’s initial scans (back when we were still in the hospital and hadn’t met with him yet), he knew he had to start David on these special cancer meds as soon as possible. If he didn’t and instead waited for the immunotherapy to work, there’s no way that we would’ve even been able to have a conversation with David today. That’s how advanced his cancer was.
So what does this change? Not a whole lot, as far as treatment goes. Of course this is incredible news. This is FANTASTIC news. This news gives us a whole lot more hope in David’s future. However, this does not mean he is cancer free. His body still has a lot of fighting it needs to do. With the tumors mostly gone, it will be a lot easier for his body to fight, but it’s still going to be a long road.
He will be continuing his cancer meds until he starts immunotherapy. Once he starts that, he will take a short break from the meds, and then start them back up at a lower dose.
He will still be getting his radiation treatment on his brain. He goes in next week for his follow up from his last round of treatment, and they will potentially start doing the planning for the brain treatment.
We still don’t know how David’s body will react to immumotherapy. Some people feel great on it, others have very severe reactions. We are praying that David will fall into the first category.
As I said before, David is still in a significant amount of pain. Hopefully his appointment next week will offer a good amount help in that area.
David is also still weak. After all he’s been through, it’s going to be awhile before his body is feeling strong again. One day at a time, though. The strength will come back, but it’s going to take a lot of hard work.
Praise God that we had all the provisions we needed to be able to be in this situation today. I could go into how things looked grim for so long, but that’s a post for another day. God has been with us throughout this whole journey, and we are blessed by His presence and peace. Today’s news hasn’t changed God’s plan for David. God knew all of this before any of us even knew what was going on with David, but today we got the best news we could’ve asked for and things are looking way more hopeful now. David still has a lot to fight, but he has a lot better chance now. God is SO good!! Thank you for all your prayers! They are powerful and God is working through them!! Please keep them coming until we can declare that David is cancer FREE!

Prayer requests:
-PRAISE for amazing results today!
-For complete healing of David’s body
-For David’s strength to return
-For wisdom for his doctors as they are planning these next steps
-For no bad side effects from immunotherapy, when David starts it
-For family that are helping with the kids, that they have renewed strength, patience and joy every day
-For God to help our kids with every struggle that they are experiencing.

Also, don’t forget that we have our BINGO event coming up this weekend, through Signs of Sunshine! Feel free to share!
https://www.facebook.com/events/1014082715639133/