Broken, but hopeful

All is still well with my soul, I'm just suffering from a broken heart at the moment.  God answered our prayers for wisdom for Andrew's doctors, in fact the pathologist that has been mulling over Andrew's liver biopsy slides, remained dissatisfied with the information she had.  She would lay awake at night trying to think of what else she could test for to get to the bottom of her nagging suspicion that something was there.  She consulted with pathologists at Methodist Hospital and MD Anderson and that's when she found the source of Andrew's illness.  A Neuroendocrine Tumor = cancer!  It is an extremely rare cancer in adults and even more rare in children (there is only a hand full of kids nationwide that have it).  It is a grade 2 (which is a blessing because it is a slow growing cancer) and stage 4 (meaning it's spread to other tissue/organs, etc).  We know that his liver contains too many lesions/tumors to be able to resect (meaning to remove those areas), so the best hope is treatment to shrink or prevent the cancer from spreading.  In the mean time, we need to identify the primary source of the cancer, which they are presuming is in his pancreas.  The good news is that the primary source didn't show up on the initial CT scan or MRI, so we are praying that means the tumor on his pancreas is small and that it hasn't spread anywhere else.  We are praying they are able to resect the tumor on his pancreas (assuming that's where it is, of course) and again that cancer isn't found anywhere else in his body.  At that point, we can focus on his liver (continue on treatment to hopefully shrink the tumors or possibly a liver transplant).  The hard part is that any of the available data on this type of cancer is in adults, so Andrew is literally writing the text book.  While we were taken out at the knees by this information today, we know God is not surprised and He has a plan.  At this point Andrew has another CT scan tomorrow (a more sophisticated version than the last) and then another scan next week.  We will meet with his oncologist on Wednesday of next week to come up with the treatment plan.

Will you please join us in storming the gates of heaven, praying for healing for our boy?  Will you please pray that the additional scans would show best case scenario and the treatment plan would be clear and effective?  Will you please pray for Abby too?  As you can imagine she's hurting in a big way as she is worried about Andrew.

While our hearts are broken our hope is strong!  This song is the song of my heart right now, will you please listen to it?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyUPz6_TciY

Thank you for rolling up your sleeves and getting in the trenches with us.