First, we are praising God because two months ago they never thought Scott would be doing as well as he is today. So we know that by a miracle or through the help of his recent chemo, the tumors in Scott's head have slowed down their extremely fast growth.

Next, Scott wants to again express how deeply he is touched by all of you following along our journey and encouraging us.

Unfortunately, here is the very serious and frightening news. Yesterday (Monday), we met with Scott's surgeon to talk about the most recent MRI he had for mapping his language areas, called a functional MRI. They weren't able to get very good information from that test, probably because Scott didn't understand the directions. His surgeon was surprised to find out that doctor who conducted the functional MRI also performed a standard MRI. They are glad he did because it gave his surgeon important information that we would not have discovered until later. The MRI is showing continued tumor growth. Not at the original pace but at a rate fast enough that if it continues it will take Scotts life in a month or two. He and I have noticed over the past three weeks, as you've read in my emails, that his language skills have been declining and now we have confirmation that it's because the tumors are growing into very critical areas of his brain.

They have given us the option of surgery but it carries a very heavy risk. Dr. Chandler would remove a large portion of the tumor and there is about a 40% chance that it will cause permanent irreversible brain damage. Scott would no longer be able to understand our words, or speak any of his own, be able to read or write or communicate language in any other form. In this case he would probably live 3-4 months but it will be a miserable existence. There is about a 60% chance that he will come out of the surgery without further damage. He would then get gamma knife radiation surgery to the remaining small portion of tumor followed by chemotherapy. Our best hope in this situation is that it will be effective and his life expectancy could be 6 months to a year.

There are no "good" options but we've decided to risk the surgery which will happen this Friday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. We won't know if there is any permanent brain damage for 3 to 4 days, since it takes a bit for the brain to recover from the surgery.

This was such a hard decision knowing that after Friday, Scott could cease to exist as we know him, but it seems worth the risk to prolong his life and most importantly we continue to believe that God has a miracle of healing coming for Scott. As foolish as that may sound to some, we are refusing to accept the negative outcomes for Scott and truly believe that God will rescue him. We have so much to do over the next few days to prepare for what lies ahead, most importantly we will continue "LIVING" and enjoying our growing family. We'll be getting lots of prayer and continue to ask all of you to intercede on our behalf for a miracle for Scott.

I have an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow morning so we can get a good look at our baby to come. We're so excited about that and finding out the sex of the baby! We'll let you know as soon as possible what we find out. In case you didn't already know, I'm due in July, just a week before Josephine's second birthday.

A note about ways to help us. Over the past year many people have come to help us in so many ways. We are so so grateful. It has been a huge blessing to receive meals and help around the house. Also thank you to those of you who have provided us with loving care for our daughter Josephine. If any of you would like to help with meals or cleaning, (sorry, it's kinda the dirty work) I'll give you the names of the two wonderful women who are coordinating that for us. We are so lucky to have a great nanny for Josephine and a number of others who have volunteered to help with her so we have the fun part covered. And let me tell you, she is becoming a very silly fun little girl! God bless her. Named after her dada. That was a great choice! She keeps the two of us laughing and full of kisses and what she calls the "b-hugs", that's "big hugs" to you and me. Ok, so back to the two contacts for help:
Meals
Gretchen Flores
email: gretchen_flores@comcast.net
phone: 303-319-0234

Cleaning
Kristin Stuck
email: jkandastuck@aol.com
phone: 847-864-4495

Love,
Michele and Scott