Days 7 and 8

Hi Everyone,

Ahhh...a nice weekend break from radiation. Weekends are the best! We started things off last night with a lovely Italian dinner with Randy's parents at Papa Vino's....yum! Today, we plan on taking photo's of stuff we want to sell on Craigslist and figure out if we should have our bedroom and spare room painted and carpeted...maybe that should be our next poll :-)

Anyway, Randy is doing well. He has had a couple of more headaches, but we are happy to say that Tylenol is a wonderful product that has taken those headaches away. A couple of people have asked about the dizzy spells. For the most part they are gone. He will occasionally experience a "falling" sensation when he closes his eyes, but it isn't anything severe. Randy has also had 2 days of outpatient physical therapy. His neck is quite sore and tight and he wonders if it will ever loosen up again (it will). He is being very good about doing his exercises at home as well!!!

We took Joshua with us to our Friday radiation appointment. God was so good. They were ready for Randy right when we walked in the door and 15 minutes later we were out of there! Of course, everyone loved Joshua. He was such a good boy...I was so concerned about taking him because I knew that the majority of patients there were older and very sick and probably not to into dealing with a toddler running around. The 15 minute visit was perfect and I think it lightened the mood at least for a moment. Yeah God!

I will be sure to post more next week...until then...thanks for reading and thanks for praying!

Love,
Randy, Rachel and Joshua

Days 5 and 6

Greetings,


Well, Randy just finished up his 6th radiation treatment today along with a consultation at the physical therapy center. Things are moving right along. We met with his radiation oncologist today and she is pleased that things are going well. All of us are praying that he continues to respond well to his treatments. We are monitoring his headaches and "balance" issues. He's only had 2 headaches at this point and occasional dizzy spells or off balanced episodes (typically when he closes his eyes). The doctor told us that the dizziness could increase as we progress through radiation due to the location of the treatment...cerebellum/brain stem...the equilibrium portion of the brain. As far as headaches...just praying that they don't increase or become uncontrollable with Tylenol. If they do increase it would indicate brain swelling and Randy would have to go back on steroids...not what we want.

His physical therapy will start up again either tomorrow or Friday at 3x/week for 4 weeks. We are pros at handling waiting rooms these days :-)

Anyway, all is good. God has blessed us beyond measure and we continue to Praise Him. We are spending quite a bit of time writing out questions for our appointment in May with Randy's neurosurgeon to go over more of what the future will/should/could hold. Our prayers continue to focus on complete healing and restoration without any recurrence.

Thank you again for everything. Every kind word, prayer, meal, gas card, note, email, household and childcare help has made this whole process much easier to walk through.

Love,
Randy, Rachel and Joshua