Hello and happy (almost) summer!

William has dusted off his floatie and Mary Allyson is a breath away from graduating first grade.  Last week she played the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz and I'm sure her Tony nomination is forthcoming.  Attached is a picture of Laura and the kids on Mother's Day.  With summer upon us, we McNutts have a number of treatment related items on deck, and they are as follows:

1) Friday May 24th Laura will have a colonoscopy at the request of her colorectal surgeon at MD Anderson.  This is to verify that there are no other nefarious lesions that may need to be addressed during her upcoming surgery.  Strangely, this will be her first colonoscopy as the previous attempt proved unsuccessful because, at the time, the physician was unable to move the scope past her tumor.  Pretty sweet way to kick off the summer, am I right?

2)  June 4th is colon surgery day.  The surgery is expected to last about 4 hours.  There, the surgeon will resect (remove) the portion of her colon containing the primary tumor and splice the remaining ends back together.  It's expected that she will spend 4-6 days in the hospital.  They will, unfortunately, go through her previous incision site and extend it down past her belly button.  So, it will be another open-abdomen surgery.  She will recover in Houston at her parent's house as she has previously.

3)  August 5/6 she will have a follow up CT Scan and bloodwork.  That may sound like boring news at this point; BUT, there the oncologist will be able to tell us if Laura is cancer free!  In other words, it could be her "bell ringing" appointment.  To familiarize you, when a cancer patient is determined to have no detectable remaining disease following treatment, they have the opportunity to ring a bell that hangs in the common area of the treatment center, declaring that they have won!  Go look up some videos, you'll probably cry.  Of course, that could very easily not happen.  We'll be ready for whatever news might come, but are hoping for the best!

What the future holds beyond that appointment, we're not sure!  We'd be content with a boring happily ever after, grow old and gray and cute together situation.  Time will tell, I guess!  Thank you all for your past and upcoming support.  This past year would have been infinitely less managable without your help and encouragement.  We'll keep everyone posted as things move along.  Happy summer!

Ryan