I'm so sorry, it's been WAY TOO LONG since I've updated.  And all sorts of things have happened in the meantime...

Most importantly, on Monday this week Gabe went into surgery to remove suspicious spots on and in his lungs.  We've known he would have to do this from the first CT scans done back in late May but the surgery date came more quickly after his leg surgery than we expected.  

The surgery included an incision under his arm large enough to access his right lung.  The surgeon would then go in using his eyes and touch to determine where the spots were and what needed to be removed.  In the end, it turned out he could not find the specific spots he went in looking for (they had diminished under the chemo) and so took only a handful of sand-grain sized polyps for testing. 

By 1:30 Gabe was out of surgery and by 3 he was in his room on the 10th floor of Children's ready to start the hard work of recovery.  His little body now included a chest drainage tube, epidural for localized pain management, foley catheter, and several other tubes and wires for monitoring his vitals.  

They told us probably a week of recovery but by Wednesday noon he was ready to part with his chest tube and by Thursday afternoon they pulled his epidural and Cath.  Which is why we call him the Bounce-Back Kid!

Today, Friday, we are waiting for discharge papers and looking forward to sleeping in our own beds tonight. He's still in a lot of pain.  Sitting up and walking remain challenging.  But he's a little more comfortable each day so we try to see the progress and let that keep us hopeful.

And here's the GOOD NEWS!!  Pathology reports came back from the samples taken from his lung and show NO CANCER!!  This is huge for Gabe!  The assumption is that the chemo has done its job shrinking and killing any cancer in his lungs to nonexistence.  While this doesn't confirm that they won't have to go into his left lung with the same procedure, it gets us closer to that possibility.  Which is all the hope we need right now.  

So, we're halfway through our chemo program, scheduled to begin again with week 1 of cycle 4 on Thursday, Oct. 10th with the hope of at least a couple of days of school next week for the sake of normalcy.

Thanks again for all of your support and prayers and love and kind wishes!  They sustain us!  

*** Side note:  In the midst of this crazy, otherworldly experience, I've felt a call to creative writing as a means of processing it all.  I invite you to follow my blog at www.parablesofhope.org which, while currently focuses a lot on our experience with cancer, actually has an underlying purpose of seeking hope in a divided world.