Dane had scans last week on February 22nd and got the results of that scan today. If you did not see my last post (I did not post on Facebook), Danes scans post chemo showed he still has 8 tumors in his lungs. The specialist in ST. Louis said he will most likely need surgery to remove the remaining tumors, but they want the tumors to continue to shrink as much as possible to make surgery easier. They will give 8 weeks between each set of scans and if the tumors shrink, they will give things another 8 weeks. If they grow or plateau in shrinkage, they will schedule surgery to remove the tumors and biopsy them. 

So today, Dane got scan results for 8 weeks post his scans in early January. The scans revealed that the tumors have shrunk some, but not as much as they thought they would at this point. Since they shrunk, they’re still going to give things another 8 weeks to hopefully continue shrinking. His oncologist said that he should be prepared to end up having surgery later this spring or early summer. He said from what they’re seeing, it appears that some of his tumors are teratomas. He says that some of the tumors were not fully teratomas originally and were killed by the chemo (for context, his original tumors were very big. One was the size of a grapefruit, and is now the size of a lemon!).  Unfortunately, the tumors that are leftover likely being teratomas, they don’t respond to chemo. He says that most of the time, those kind of tumors are benign, but they can’t roll the dice and hope for the best because when they aren’t benign, they are quick to spread to other places. 

So this was both good news and bad news. We honestly hoped after all the chemo was done in December that he would be cancer free. So finding out he wasn’t cancer free was disappointing and finding out again that they’re not shrinking enough and surgery is a strong likelihood is somewhat disappointing as well.  Yet, we aren’t without hope and we’re expectant in what the Lord will do and is doing. 

Dane has been back at work for close to a month now. He is his typical self with being the office prankster. His hair is coming back and he’s currently training for a half marathon in May! He’s at healthy weight and his blood work looks good. So praise God for all of those things. Please keep praying for him and thank you for continuing to follow along with Dane’s journey! 

Dane’s next scans are April 25th and we will have the results May 2nd.