Update April 6

ulie will start low dose radiation to both her spine and her head tomorrow (4/4/11). She will get radiation Mon-Fri for the next 6 weeks. She will then get a week off and they will do another 3 rounds of chemo (a round last about 28days). So we are still looking at being her about another 6 months or so. This all depends on if the cancer does not return. I know every one wonders why she must still have radiation and chemo even thought the tumor is gone. A PNET tumor is an aggressive Stage 4 cancer...this means that it has a VERY high incident of returning and or causing cancer somewhere else in her body. So the radiation and chemo are done to try and ensure that they kill the cancer. Once the cancer is gone Julie will still need to return to St Jude every few months to be sure that the cancer has not returned for the rest of her life. Julie is still not as strong as she was prior to the tumor removal. She still does not have as good of balance as before and her legs are weaker. She does however get a little stronger each day. She still has the right sided facial droop, which causes her speech to be just a lil bit slurred and her right eye is still turned way in. The doctors still feel like this will improve over time. She will continue to receive speech, OT and PT weekly, even when we return home. Julie is proud that she has tattoos, yes permanent tattoos...lol. They were put there Thursday during her MRI. They are only very small dots on her head and spine...these will be the areas that they will hit her with the radiation. But she is proud of them none the less. She has i have tattoos now like my momma. The MRI on Thursday showed that the swelling from the surgery has reduced but that there is still some bruising to her pons. So it is still healing, but it is almost back to it's normal size. Today was Julie's last day on the steroids..yea!!! Well I will keep you all post. Thanks as always, Deidra...aka Grammy