I have gotten many emails and comments wondering about my husband and I can’t thank you all enough for your prayers and comments/emails. I have not been responding to many, I hope you understand.
At this point we do have the pathology back and it is not exactly what we hoped for, but it’s not horrible. The cancer has not visibly spread to lymph nodes and/or organs, but does show a higher percentage that it could be on its way to the nodes. His tumor was a mixed germ cell, for those of you familiar with the cancer terms. it was 80% seminoma and 20% non-seminoma (embryonic carcinoma). The non-seminoma type is not treatable by radiation so we lost that option quickly.
We had decisions to make but we are fairly confident that we have made the decision of how to move forward. Sometime in the next few weeks he will undergo another surgery, to remove and dissect his abdominal lymph nodes. It’s a pretty serious surgery, putting him in the hospital for 5-7 days and then weeks of recovery. You can read more about it here if you’re interested.
We are not certain he can go this route though and won’t know until his blood markers are back next Friday. If they are rising he has to begin chemo immediately. We are praying that does not happen.
He still may have to do chemo after the surgery if they find significant cancer, but normally the surgery is a way to prevent having chemo if the cancer hasn’t already spread.
Although it’s not exactly the answer we wanted, we are peaceful and faithful. I actually have written tons more about this on our personal family blog, which I don’t share publicly. If you are someone who has gotten to *know me* through this blog and would like to keep up with his journey, just email me and I will give you that blog address. I just don’t like to have it linked up because I often share on that blog about our ministry life in Philly too. I would love to have you reading it though if you are interested, just email (address on the sidebar).
The GOOD NEWS is … my precious boys are home!!!! Frank’s parents drove them back up last night and will leave tomorrow. We are thrilled to have the loud chaos back!!!! We needed to get back to normal until we can decide something about this surgery. So until next Friday, I pray we will be a normal family, ignoring the fact that cancer is invading our lives, as much as possible!