Good morning, friends! Today begins what I hope can be a week of posts informing you about all the steps leading up to this point, surgery day itself, and recovery thus far. I cannot promise, of course, because who knows what the week will hold and how we’ll fare. But! Thats the goal anyway! And I appreciate our friends who follow along and give us so much grace 💜
I’m going to start the week off with letting you know how we found out Brady had a mass in his brain, and how we managed some of that hardship.
Maybe you noticed, or maybe you didn’t, but I stopped updating everyone on Brady’s MRIs. The last one I talked about was MRI 10. It was clear, and we were content and kept on trucking!
MRI 11 came around in July of 2023, and it was Bradys annual top-to-bottom scan, rather than just of his spine. He went and had it done, and probably for the first time ever, we didn’t really even think about what the results were. We mostly forgot he had it done, and didn’t give it a second thought. Not only were we accustomed to easy, unremarkable results, but we had also began fostering maybe three-ish weeks prior, and our “easy” first placement had turned out to be pretty complex. Oh and we had recently listed our house for sale. Life was FULL.
But then Brady came home from work one day and texted me from the garage, asking me to come talk to him out there before he came into the house. He told me that our doctor had called on his drive home, and told him the results came back and they found a mass. We held each other and bawled in the garage, leaned up against the big freezer, our fears pouring out of our souls. It was a pretty brutal scene, to be honest. Immediate fears were obvious – Brady dying, and the ministry removing the morsel from our care. We cried and prayed, wiped our faces, and then as planned, we loaded up all six children and went to the city to buy shoes for school. Barf.
The appointments started shortly thereafter, with our family doctor, Bradys oncologist, neurosurgeon, as well as our insurance provider. It got pretty businessy for a bit there, while we tried to get real answers for things, have realistic expectations, and make any kind of plan that felt possible.
Bradys 11th MRI was followed by a 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th as we kept an eye on things, roughly every 6-8 weeks. We knew we hated having that mass in there, but we also knew that no one wants to have brain surgery if they don’t need it. Our surgeon felt the exact same way. We were all happy to watch and wait for at least a little while. Over those months, absolutely nothing changed about the mass. Not in size or shape or even chemical compound. No part of the mass was ever meatier than the other, or thicker or thinner, or more or less vascular. It was just 🤷🏼♀️ there.
Which made it easier-ish to keep on looking forward. We didn’t want it to run our lives or hang a dark cloud anywhere it didn’t belong. So we told only our closest people, and then we kept on living!
It was a rough start to summer, but a beautiful season to follow.
For the rest of 2023, things were smooth, and with ongoing follow-up scans, nothing really changed.
Uuuuuntil they did.
More tomorrow 💜