Pray for us

I have been a slug. No posts for three days or so, and not even any excuses. I just didn’t feel like it (writing). That’s the bug-a-bear I’ve been confronting since I finished grad school (with brief interruptions). This blog has helped me past that, but this week even that didn’t work.

Before I get to other stuff, a quick update: I’ve been scrambling to get some of the spring stuff done before all of this bi-coastal medicine stuff starts happening. I did get some of my seedlings transplanted today, and I got the strawberry plants to the garden before it started raining (but not transplanted–the bed is almost, but not quite, ready). Ralph did the first rough till today, the one that makes the weed seeds sprout so you can till them under in a few weeks.

Friday I’ll be headed off to pick up my brother. On Saturday morning, Tom and I will fly to Boston, spend a few days in a Marriot there, get the preliminary CT scan done and go through the consultation. There are, the doctor says, some things they want him to sleep on before they start treatment.

Tom just laughed when he heard that. “I’m sure they want to tell me about all the risks,” he said, “but since the alternative is to be dead within two years, how risky can it be?” Tom is 49, barely.

He is going back for something called photon laser radiation (I think that’s right). It’s fairly new, has apparently few side effects, and is sort of the last hope for this tumor of his. He’s had numerous surgeries, standard radiation treatment, lost one eye, endured incredible headaches, and gone through things I can’t imagine with this “non-cancerous” tumor. This is rather a last hope.

Based on what we know today (before the ominous warnings that will be delivered next Monday), the treatment fries the tumor in place, turns it into scar tissue, kills the sucker dead. I hope so. Nothing else has worked so far. Other treatments are like pruning a plant–it just grows faster. Six weeks after his last surgery, the tumor had doubled in size again. It’s very rare, his doctors tell him, but somehow, that’s little consolation if you’re the one affected.

This trip, we’ll be gone for only a few days. We have to come back home while they review the CT scan and develop a detailed treatment map. Then, about the end of April or the first week in May, he’ll go back for a 6-8 week course of treatment. I’ll go with him for at least a week or two until I’m sure that he a) can get around OK, and b) really doesn’t have debilitating side effects.

The only frustrating thing is that all of this should have happened a month ago. But the hospital lost his records for a very long time. But Tom’s holding up well, and I think we’ll make it through this.

So, pray for us. If you don’t believe in God, pray anyway, or at least give your dog an extra pat and think good thoughts. For the second time tonight, I’m going to write “There are more things in heaven and earth than we have ever dreamed.” We need all the positive energy we can get working on our behalf.