Amy update

Good news? Bad news? Sometimes in the cancer business, it's hard to know.

What's for certain is that the circumstances surrounding Big MRI 2 (the sequel to last month's mostly positive/slightly ambiguous brain X-ray) were nothing short of frustrating. On Tuesday morning, around 3 AM, Amy woke up with a partial seizure—the same kind of seizure that she had throughout February following the surgery, the same kind of seizure that she hasn't had in over three months. If you recall, these unsettling tremors last about one minute and involve lots of muscle spasms in the face, much drooling, and slurred speech for several minutes after they pass. To have one now, after three months of not having any, left us both rather dismayed. What happened? What could be causing this? A question for our doctor. And fortunately for us, we were seeing our neurologist later in the day. Seizures are unwanted visitors, but at least this one had good timing.

The MRI later that morning was uneventful. Aftesaw our neurologist, who explained that this new seizure was pretty much nothing to worry about. What could have caused it? Most likely, he said, something happened that diluted the potency of Amy's anti-seizure medication, a drug called Keppra, which she takes every day. What could have impacted the drug? A change in diet—and as it turns out, Amy hadn't had much to eat or drink that day. But stress can do the trick, too, and the doctor suggested that Amy's recent struggles with mild depression could have produced the kind of anxiety that could have undermined Keppra's effectiveness. Finally, our doctor pointed out that Amy has always been on a rather low dosage, so he advised her to take some more.

That was yesterday. Today, we again trekked up to Los Angeles—a 30 plus mile drive each way, an hour up and an hour back—to meet with our neurosurgeon to discuss the results of the MRI. When we got there, we learned that… we didn't have an appointment! Apparently, the scheduler screwed up. She never inputted our appointment in the computer. Oh, well. It happens. But the appointment most definitely wasn't: our doctor was in surgery. We had come all that way for this big news, only to learn that our newscaster was in the field on assignment. We were pretty irked. And all we could do was trek back home and wait on the good doctor to call.

Which he did. The big news: No news. As it turns out, Big MRI 2 looks EXACTLY like Big MRI 1—a healthy looking brain, no new tumor growth, but an small ring-shaped spot on the perimeter of where they removed Amy's original cancer mass. This ring-shaped spot—exact same location, exact same size. Now, based on what we were told last month, we were expecting that spot to be gone, or at least smaller; our doctor suspected the spot to merely be the result of inflammation caused by radiation. Now, there are three theories:

1.    We're stilll looking at radiation damage—which is fine. No worries.
2.    We're looking at a pool of contrast—the dye used to take the MRI photo. Fine. No worries.
3.    We're looking at one weirdly shaped tumor. Worrisome.

Our doctor was "very pleased" with this MRI. In his book, as long as that ring doesn't grow, Amy is "healthy." Moreover, as long as that ring stays exactly the size and shape that it is at present, then Amy will live a very long life. Still, this wasn't the news we wanted to hear today. We wanted to enter this new phase of Life With Cancer with a clean picture. The ambiguity of Amy's condition is challenging enough as it is. To have this ring—well, it's like someone decided to underline the "ambiguity" part of this whole business, like, 50 times, just in case we had missed the point--which we hadn't, by the way. And so it goes that Amy will have another MRI next month. It would be cool if you guys would ask the big guy upstairs if he could use his magic eraser and wipe that spot out of Amy's head. And if He could buck up our spirits, and teach us how to live graciously, thankfully, and wisely in this protracted state of Not Knowing, well, that would be even better.

And so, life goes on. Lauren is sitting next to me, flipping through baby photo albums and recounting today's episode of "Dora The Explorer." Ben is building a spaceship with his Legos and fighting the Clone Wars. Amy just left to go see a movie with some friends.

Could life be a lot worse ? Hell yes.

But right now, I wish it was just a little better.

We are thankful for your love and support. All of you are truly blessings from God. Thank you—for taking care of us, and for listening.

Much love,

Jeff, Amy, Ben and Lauren


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