Home Sweet Home

There is a reason you've not seen a new post in several days.  It's because we've been enjoying the peace and quiet of home sweet home!  Christian was discharged on Saturday - home just in time for the 2nd half of the Bucket game.  With the kiddos back home, I'm in full swing mommy mode again, so you may not hear from me as often.

Christian continues to recover quite well!  The pain medicine does make him a bit drowsy, so he's definitely getting his rest.  At his rate of recovery, I wouldn't be surprised if he was off the meds within a couple weeks.

His staples were removed yesterday (all 30+ of them).  He is more eager than ever to start a workout regimen (after healing, of course) and a healthy diet so that his body is in tip top shape for treatment! 

The road to recovery
What does the rest of 2012 look like for us?  Christian will be spending the next 6+ weeks simply healing.  I'm working with him to establish a daily routine for himself.  Six weeks is a long time to be at home!  I find it humorous that he'll share a similar daily routine as our 3 year-old in that he'll need to ensure he's getting the proper nutrition and a good afternoon nap in! 

We do have a meeting scheduled in the next week with a sarcoma specialist, one of the only two specialists in the entire state!  And, he lives 2 miles away from our house!  So we will continue to work on our attack plan to fight this, and may very well consider alternate centers that handle this type of malignancy.

What is Leiomyosarcoma (LMS)?
According to the sarcoma specialist, malignancy is the right term for this disease, and not cancer.  Sarcoma is a malignancy of connective tissue.  There are many versions of this malignancy, so the specialist cautioned us on "internet research", as each case is it's own.  He says many of things you could find written are not written by people that really know the disease (this is a rare malignancy dealt with by a relatively small community of specialists), nor may those details be germane to our specific situation.  Some good news - our initial understanding from the specialist, is that it won't spread (metastasize) to the liver, brain, bones, lymph nodes in this case.  It can to the lung (which is likely what we're dealing with) or it can come back locally to the place it originated from (near Christian's left kidney).  More good news on that front is that the tumor was removed in its entirety (I think the medical term for this is "clear margins").  The specialist walked in and the first thing he said to us was something like, "You didn't have a very good surgeon.......He's what I'd call a magician."

Once Christian has recovered, our focus will be to control those lung nodules!  News which gives us greater hope is that this particular disease is treatable in a number of ways.  In other words, we have lots of cards in our treatment deck deck to play, according to the specialist.  This is not always the case for many malignancies/cancers.  However, we still have a very long road ahead of us that could very well result in several surgeries and treatments over a life-time to remove the nodules.  Considering his rate of recovery and the fact that he had no symptoms from this massive tumor, Christian already has proven he has superhero strength.  I have faith that he can overcome this!

Thank you, dear friends and family, for all your support!  Please continue to pray for Christian and continued recovery and success of future treatments.

In the meantime, we look forward to sharing and loving life every day with family and friends.


"Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise."
-Jeremiah 17:14