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Brady had his seventh MRI last night. Do you remember when he couldn’t get one?!?! It seems that cancer of the spine is seen as a solid enough reason to have regular scans, and while we are not naive to the risks that come alongside regular radiation, I am overwhelmed with gratefulness to have a serious medical team who wants to watch Brady for the rest of his life.
While Brady was living in the rehab ward at City Hospital, we met another patient there who also was paralyzed thanks to a tumour in her spine. However, this was her second go round. She had one years ago, and had recovered so well that they stopped monitoring her. By the time they discovered regrowth, removal was much harder, and her previously incomplete injury was completed. This means that she has no nerve communication left from her spine down below her height of injury. No movement, no sensation, nada. Because her medical team stopped watching her. So please hear me. I am SO happy that Brady will be scanned regularly. Heck, its amazing he’s not glowing after so many of these suckers!
Maybe you saw our stories on Instagram, and maybe not. I was really struggling with apprehension. One of the MRI machines at RUH had broken, so his day and time were bumped up a bit, but he had to go to the hospital we are the least familiar with, in the heart of the ghetto, in the dead of night. So that was unsettling. But we got there! Of course, we got to the front doors FOUR MINUTES after they were closed for the night 🙄 So we got him back into the van and went to emergency, where he was admitted. But he had to wait in the emergency room! And they had insisted he arrive 45 minutes early! This is not an especially safe place to be as it is, and hanging out in the ER is pretty sketchy and vulnerable. But he was safe, and I drove out of that place as quickly as I could.
I lurked in a nearby (but not too near) Walmart parking lot. I crocheted, watched a show, and texted/chatted with some of my people 💜Thank you to those who checked in on me. I really appreciated that.
Brady’s scan was shorter than expected! It was about an hour and twenty minutes long, and its been up to three hours in the past, I think. I chose to believe that was good news, and I was very excited to pick him up!
The two handicapped spots at the entrance of emergency were filled with people just standing around who had no interest in moving as I sat with my signal light blinking. Finally I just started driving in, and they meandered over into the next spot. I texted Brady I was there, not about to leave my vehicle open and running. He was there within a minute, and we took off together.
Kind of bizarre when a late night MRI counts as a date night, hey? Haha!
Aaaaanyway, I won’t leave anyone hanging. You guys know we have a really good thing with our doctor, so I texted her this morning and asked if she’d keep an eye out for results. They only actually get sent to her office a day or two later, but they’re online for her viewing earlier, so we often get our results as soon as she can find them. I texted her mid-late morning, and she texted me right before noon excitedly, saying she’d look right away.
And then there was no response for over a half hour. 🤮 So while I refused to nag her, anxiety was building.
But then she texted Brady and I in a group with the most beautiful news 🥺
“I am looking at dec 12 mri results on ehealth and they look great! The spot they have been following at T10 is less evident and they actually question if it is there anymore!!”
That stupid spec has been hanging over us since Brady’s surgery. There has been so much speculation over it. It could be leftover tumour. It could be new growth. It could be a stitch that didn’t dissolve. It could be scar tissue, or blood, or displaced tissue of literally any kind. It is what we’ve been watching so closely, as just about everyone we’ve encountered in the medical world is waiting for it to grow into another cancerous mass. It has remained stable all along, which is better than it growing, but still. It loomed.
And now
💨
Its gone. Or pretty freaking close to gone.
Guys, there is NO scientific explanation for this. Believe what you will, but I KNOW this was an act of God! The strongest, most miraculous reminder that He cares for us, literally down to the tiniest little spec of who knows what inside of our bodies. I am incredibly grateful for that. I’m SO glad its not up to me to fix. Thank you Lord!
I am both immensely relieved, and also about 20 years older than I was before that text came through.
If I don’t go grey before the end of the year, I never will.