May 8- A day for unexpected news!

Three days after my birthday this spring, I had an appointment scheduled with a radiation oncologist.  My neurosurgeon met with me after my April MRI and suggested I meet with him to discuss options for the future about my tumor.  Apparently, it had slightly grown-- at the time I didn't realize how much!  Well, amazingly, the radiation oncologist---Dr. Hunter-- is actually my mission president's son! What a small world! He is also young, as is my neurosurgeon, and I feel so blessed they will be able to see me through this for many years!

Well, as we met with the resident doctor before meeting with the radiation oncologist, I was shocked to hear him suggest doing radiation!!! What??? I thought we were like 10 or 20 years away from needing anything like that! He discussed the details of what it was like, left us to think and told us he would send in the doctor.  Well, Dr. Hunter was quite busy that day and took awhile to come in, which gave us time to think and ponder what to do, and write LOTS of questions about it!  Tyler and Mom were both with me at the appointment, but Tyler had to get back to work before we met with the doctor.  When we did see the doctor, my Mom and I asked our notebook of questions, expressed our concerns about doing radiation, and asked his opinion.

Long-term risks to doing radiation:
-possible chance of developing cancer: but this would likely not be until 15-20 years down the road, and there is a less and 1% chance even then!
-We worried about the damage that could be done to the only eye I can still see out of, but he said they would avoid radiation to that eye.

Short Term:
-I would be tired
-I would lose a little hair on the sides (but it would grow back)
-My headaches could get worse, my right eye could close more, and other nausea & radiation side effects could occur.

Overall: when we heard that the tumor was only 1 millimeter away from my left eye, it made sense to do radiation!  And if we waited longer to do radiation, the radiation could be done even closer to my good eye.  If we acted now, we could stop the growth before it got any closer!

When it all came down to the deciding factor for me, I was willing to do ANYTHING to keep from going blind!  I was willing to endure any side effects, fatigue, etc.  When we went to the temple with both our Kendrick and Thomas parents, we prayed and pondered, and felt very at peace about doing radiation!

So I started the treatments June 17th, two weeks before school was out.  I would need to go for 6 weeks, Monday-Friday, for 15 minutes a day, until I received 30 treatments.

Here's the table that I would be sitting on each day!