What's Old Is New Again

The old news is once again new news...there is really a tumor on her pancreas, and it's just sitting there smiling back at us.

We visited the pediatric gastroenterologist yesterday (the guy who thought it might be cancer who referred us to the surgeon in the first place). So, he said he doesn't think it's cancer (yay!!) and that he has only seen one case of tumor turned cancer in a child in his entire 30 year career...and he sees all the horrible stuff in the state and maintains the national pancreatic tumor record (did you even know that existed?). It's extremely, extremely rare. But, since we don't really know what it is or isn't right now....

We had more blood work! We still don't have results from the blood work 3 weeks ago (for Cystic Fibrosis and auto immune things). They did another MRI and they saw the tumor. It hasn't changed a bit...no bigger, no smaller. Why they didn't see it on the endoscopic ultrasound we may never know. So the plan now is to wait and watch. She is supposed to eat a more normal diet for the next 3 months...I hate to undo all the good habits and great tastes she has developed...but we need to see if the tumor is going to do anything under normal circumstances. After all she might grow up to raise cattle or be a restaurant critic or something, it's hard to say! We will go for another MRI in August, and will go in immediately if she experiences and pain, diarrhea, rashes, etc, etc

And so the grand experiment begins! It is going to make the summer so much easier in so many ways I count it as a blessing. We are going off to Girl Scout camp in June and I wasn't really sure what they would feed her if we asked for a fat free vegan diet...carrot & celery sticks? It will make camping trips much more pleasant as well...no one will be eating smores in front of her!

I asked for prayer for perseverance on Sunday, little did I know how much I would need it! I guess this goes on for months and months now...I really thought we were going to wrap this up in a nice neat little package and be done with it, guess not.

I picked up a book today called "The Beginner's Guide to Saving The Universe" and it had the author's top 10 list of necessities in life. The number 10 thing was "Persistence. Joy. Persistence. Joy. Persistence. Joy. Persistence." I think I'd like to meet her on a train some day.