Update on Ammy

For those of you who follow my sisters blog this will be old news to you...I am sorry it has taken me so long to update on what is going on with my little girl. It seemed at the time that there was more questions than answers so as a family we decided to delay giving an update until we knew what was going on. As for the surgery Ammy is healing well. She just started her second week of school today and is generally in a great mood, free of pain. Dr. G was able to remove most of her tumor. Unfortunately I cannot say all is gone. In order to remove the entire tumor the doctor would have had to take out too much healthy tissue, and leave her paralyzed. He felt that under the circumstances it was best to take as much as he could and still leave her healthy and able to do what she is doing now.

As for the next stage in all of this!! I met with her onchologist and they have decided that chemotherapy is what needs to come next. Our hope for this treatment is that it will stop the growth of tumors for the next few years. The chances of the chemo getting rid of the tumor is very small and is not something we are hoping for. Ammy will be taking care of this most likely for the rest of her life. She will be going for surgery soon and having a port put in so that they can deliver the chemo easily and do blood tests with less pain and hassle. She will be taking 3 of the chemo meds by mouth and we will go in about every two weeks in order to get an iv of her other meds. This will be a big change for our family with having to be on a strict diet and a tight schedule. We have always tended to be more spontaneous and just dealt with things as they come along. I will need to be much more organized and plan ahead better than I have before, but like everything else we will learn and just take it one day at a time!