Today was a pretty good day. It began as most normally do, with me in a mad dash to get to where I need to be. I was so prepared too. Up early and getting ready. Plenty of time to make it and even to stop and get mom some coffee on the way. I planned to be waiting when she arrived. Yet I forgot that the time had not been changed on any of the clocks at my mothers house. This suddenly turned my plenty of time into running late, all in the blink of an eye. This led to a mad dash to Tupelo, calling the clinic to notify them of this idiotic mistake. They were more than understanding but I still felt so bad.  I was also worried because I knew we had the first appointment and we would see the doctor pretty quickly.  I arrived within moments of mom being taken to the back.   I like Dr. Reid. He is very straight forward and informative. He explained to us all we can expect and while he didn’t sugar coat anything, I didn’t feel discouraged or hopeless either. He just explained what the situation was and what he could do to treat it. I liked that he didn’t try to use a lot of medical jargon that might go over our heads. Once he noticed I understood a bit of medical terminology, he adjusted his filter accordingly. I appreciated that and think it is imperative to providing quality patient care. Inform your patients but without alienating them with information they can’t understand. I hate when doctors do not tell you what is going on or explain the situation to you. This leaves  me to dig and discover information on my own, hoping I am piecing it together correctly. I want facts. I want the names of diseases, what level, and all of these type of specifics. Information is knowledge. How can you ever make informed decisions if you are not informed? So thank you Dr. Reid, thank you for informing us. 

Now what he informed us of is going to be hard but it’s the best way to fight this little monster inside her brain. She will undergo 5 radiation treatments a week, Monday - Friday for the next 6 weeks. This will be in addition to her oral chemotherapy drug. We will then receive another scan at the end of 6 weeks, see where we stand and go from there.  This is all defendant on our Mayo Clinic Evaluation tomorrow. While Dr. Reid didn’t seem to think she would be a candidate based on his scans, he said that he wasn’t a neurosurgeon and if Mayo believed they could remove most of it while leaving her intact mentally and physically then he believed that is what we should do. He went ahead and measured her for her radiation treatments so if we don’t go do the surgery, we can begin the radiation treatments one day next week. If we go to Florida for surgery, then we will have to repeat the measurement scan but will proceed with the same treatment post-op.  Tomorrow is Dr. Jones @1245, with a tele med evaluation by Mayo Clinic at 115. I’ll update after we know more about what direction her treatment will be proceeding.

Once she got to her room from Tupelo, I stopped by since I got us some lunch on the way home. We were able to talk to her social worker who had been coordinating with Britney about getting her home. The good news is she will be coming home on Friday!  She is so relieved as she hasn’t been able to rest up here lately and is just ready to come home. We are planning to continue her physical and occupational  therapy from home and will also have home health visits during the week  to help me with her day to day needs. Thanks for everyone who helped brighten her day while she was in rehab. Your calls, visits and cards meant so much. From now on she will be back at the brick house in Myrtle so feel free to pop in and visit, provided you’re not ill in any way of course.  She would enjoy it very much.