{ Lastest Update December 8th, please pray }

Dear saints,

I spoke with radiation oncologist today 12/7 Friday at Old Palomar Hospital. We discussed two types of radiation treatment. There are at least eight spots or lesions that can be seen on the Brain MRI --all less than one cm. Some are quite small. They are scattered throughout the brain. It is possible that their are more tiny ones that can't be seen from this MRI.

So the suggestion was to do a whole brain radiation therapy. This would get even the tiny ones that are unseen. However the side effect is that there will be permanent memory loss to my short term memory. Treatment would last 10 sessions five minutes per day for two weeks.

The other option is to do a stronger dose targeted specifically at the eight lesions that can be seen. However this is a much stronger dosage of radiation and would take at least 60 minutes each time. 20 minutes per lesion. While this would be successful in eliminating it completely, with minimal effect on the rest of the brain ( good tissue) it may not catch smaller unseen cancer spots. This also can cause damage to cells around the edge of the lesions. This is also more complicated to set up, they need to do a more precise Brain scan. CT scan that is more thorough to find all the spots that could have been missed by the general Brain MRI last week. Then a physicist must determine the arcs at which the radiation enters the brain avoiding over laps and minimizing effect on other unaffected areas. But there could be a chance that something tiny is not targeted and appears later and more radio surgery would be needed.

We have until Monday 8 am to decide what to do. But at this point neither treatments sound good. We just look to The Lord at this point. Both ways have pros and cons. Lastly, we would have to either delay the scheduled Dec. 19th chemo session in order to proceed with radiation therapy. Or we have to wait till after the third chemo is over and do the radiation.

At this point, I feel like the major cancer in the body needs to be dealt with first. So I personally don't feel I should postpone the chemo. I can feel the lumps growing back after two weeks post chemo. So delaying another two weeks does not seen like a smart decision as it grows very rapidly. However the flip side is that we don't want the lesions in the brain to spread or grow bigger either. It has already affected my memory and eye sight slightly. And can affect my motor skills also. (I am currently on steroids to reduce inflammation and headaches caused by lesions.)

So as you can see, we are at a hard place. Not one way is the clear choice and none is the perfect solution. We just realize and admit to our weakness and that only Christ can do it at this point. There is nothing that we can do. All our self efforts are in vain. Only Christ can heal me. Only Christ is on the Throne. And we just look to him and seek His leading. Please continue to pray for us and for our decision for Monday morning.

Thank you for your support.