Katherine Fandey Update July 11, 2014 I’m going to begin this update with a request to please continue to pray for complete healing for Katherine. Unfortunately she is not doing well at all again! The pain is totally back and now the compete left side of her face is numb to sensation, suggesting pressure building on the nerves again from whatever it is growing inside her head. We got her MRI moved up from next week to last night due to her condition worsening, but we probably won’t know much if anything until the beginning of next week. She told me she is both scared and discouraged. She has already been through this once which is more than enough for anybody to bare! On Friday I found her lying on her floor cuddled up with her life sized teddy bear and a tear in her eye. I asked her why the tears and she said because she wants to do things but just can’t. I told her what I overheard a good friend of mine who played football in college recently say, “Sometimes you have play through the pain. You have to play injured.” I never quite know when to do these updates, wanting to wait until I have more definitive information. And, as always, I’m overly conscious that we are not the only ones in need. However, many of you faithfully continue to pray and at this point we really need that. For details, keep reading below, you will find some surprises too in this update. The doctors had given us the thumbs up to take her out of town with us on a two week vacation with a week of work I had sandwiched in between. We had planned this seven months ago, but of course we were all set to cancel it. They said go ahead, it might be good for her. And it was for most of our time away. Basically they are stumped as to what to do next so we have been in a wait and see mode. Will this continue to grow and escalate to the previous extent before the surgery? Despite the pain coming back before we had left, she did pretty well the first week. The second week she noticed more pain and then half-way home on our drive from Olympia, Washington she really went downhill. Now to top this off, last Sunday on our vacation Wilma was waterskiing and dislocated her hip in a fall! The ER in Olympia, Washington got it back in, but the CT scan showed a bone chip in the socket so she has been on crutches since then. The doctor here in San Diego is scheduling her for surgery this coming week. In fact, on Friday night Katherine had her MRI at 8:30pm and Wilma had her MRI at 9:00pm. I told her she could have saved a lot of money and hassle by just climbing in the same MRI machine with Katherine. So on the drive home it was just our oldest son Jonathan and I doing the driving which was fine until we got to San Luis Obispo. There we both picked up an intestinal thing (which three days later I still have!) so we now both know most of the clean restrooms from SLO to San Diego! It’s not just raining here now, it’s pouring. If I break out with zits or boils I’m going to change my name to Job . But back to Katherine, our primary concern. So here’s where we stand. We feel very good about our team of doctors here at Rady Childrens Hospital in San Diego, they are some of the best. They still don’t know exactly what this growth is. The hope was that it would not grow back, but from the MRI four weeks ago and the current symptoms, it looks like it has. Our oncologist is hesitant to kill something with Proton Beam Therapy (one option since more surgery is not) when he’s not sure what we are killing, but that may be what they tell us to do. They wanted us to see their neurovascular surgeon because they still believe it is a “vascular malformation” or “vascular lesion”. But what doesn’t make sense is that these don’t grow back so fast. If it were this, perhaps they could do an angio-vascular treatment? The neurovascular surgeon’s first availability is August 1st but we are not sure we can wait that long. We do have a friend who works in the pediatric neuro-oncology department of the University of Minnesota and their team is now looking at Katherine’s case too. They are going to start consulting with our team here in San Diego, the more bright minds the better at this point. They believe Katherine has a hemangiopericytoma which was an option listed on the pathology report but ruled out because of the strange location. These can be cancerous! They think we should just blast it out with the Proton Beam Therapy (aka Gamma Knife). So that’s the latest and we hope to know more this coming week without having to take Katherine to emergency. All this to say, Katherine is in a lot of pain, we don’t have any more answers at this point and we are not sure if we have many or any options. So we continue to lift her up in prayer. At the conference I was working at in the middle of our vacation we were totally blessed to have one of the pastors, Sam Storms, and the whole team of over 450 pastors and their wives specifically lift Katherine up in prayer. We are so thankful for the body of Christ. Today as I was praying the thought came into my mind, with all these people around the world praying for Katherine and round two happening all over again, perhaps God has decided not to heal Katherine. And you know what, that could be the case. But until we know that for certain, I am reminded of the story Jesus told about the widow who persistently kept pleading until the judge acted on her behalf. So if you would, please keep knocking with us! He is in control and He is a good God! Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said, “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:1-8
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 07:46:00 +0000
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