Hi everyone. By now many of you know that last week Alex had a follow up MRI at Abbott to see how things were coming along. Unfortunately, we did not get the news we were hoping for and the pocket of fluid in her cervical spine is not shrinking - it's growing. This is a fairly serious development.

We had a meeting with the neurosurgeon's assistant today but we didn't really get any answers yet. She had lots of questions for us about Alex's symptoms, what has improved, what has gotten worse and that kind of thing. She did say that they don't want to make decisions based on just MRI results and they want to factor in how Alex is actually doing. Fortunately, Alex is not at this time having any new symptoms, but her old symptoms that were present from the beginning of this journey have not improved and in some cases, are worsening. We do anticipate that the more the pocket of fluid grows, the more it will start to affect other nerves and obviously we don't want that. The neurosurgeon's assistant will be taking all the information we gave her and going over all that with the neurosurgeon and will get back to us. I am anticipating that we will be having another consultation with him in the near future.

Needless to say we are discouraged and frustrated. It's not that the previous surgeries didn't work - it's that they only fixed part of the problems she is having. It feels like there are always complications arising as well that are preventing clear answers. 

I'll be updating here as we find out what the plan is moving forward. But it's clear that this journey is not over and we continue to need prayers from all of you.