Bonnie Downey Team Bonnie (Downey)

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.

Medical history over the last few months:

Bonnie experienced episodes of speech difficulties and with having crying episodes since the beginning of school. With CoVID/ vax shots - 3 full doses /start of school/ her current cancer meds, we waited until we could see her UVA oncologist on our regular schedule to discuss the symptoms. He scheduled an MRI of the brain and anxiety meds at that visit but the MRI wasn’t on the schedule for several weeks after the doctor visit. No urgency noted at the time of the visit.

There was a medication error last Tuesday and they couldn’t complete the scheduled MRI on our arrival. We have done MRIs every three months for the last several years for sarcoma nodules in Bonnie’s lungs but this was the first ever brain MRI since the original PET scan 5 years ago. The lung cancer is stable but is monitored closely in the pelvis, abdomen and lungs but not the brain. So we were brought back on Wednesday at 7:30 am and completed her brain MRI. The follow up was going to be a Telehealth consult later that day. We had just arrived home back to Massanutten when her oncologist called to report the brain MRI findings.

We rushed back to UVA at 3 PM only to wait in the ER for 5 hours before ER docs took us in. We didn’t reach the nursing floor until 4 am and the oncology, neurosurgeons and neuro-oncology had team meetings to decide the plan. She had surgery on Sunday (10/31) with Dr. Helm operating for 5+ hours on the largest of 6 tumors.

Surgery was successful in removing most but not all of the largest tumor. The remaining portion and the others are to be treated with radiation after the skull heals. They only removed a relatively small portion of the skull to operate.

We are still a few days from returning home if all goes well and a few weeks away from radiation.

This will be a great challenge for modern medicine and our strength but it is certainly not beyond the remedy of our God. Please continue to pray for Bonnie , me and our kids who both live and work near Charlottesville/UVA. Pray for the medical care teams and their wisdom.


**Other than the 5 hour wait in the ER and the loss of privacy in sharing rooms UVA has been very good. The nursing shortage is real but they are still caring and compassionate despite the overloads they are experiencing.

We are blessed to have so many caring and believing friends, neighbors and brothers and sisters in Christ.
We ask prayer for healing and health but also to see God’s sovereignty and promises work together for His glory.

Mike