pathology report

Jenny learned the details of her pathology report last week.  The tumor was 3cm not 2cm, protruded beyond the thyroid gland, and was either near or around a blood vessel.  None of that sounds very good to us and it's been an uneasy weekend.  We don't have an immediate opportunity to run this by a doctor for interpretation -- our next meeting with our surgeon Dr. Boyle is July 30 -- so our knowledge is pretty limited at this point.

We do know that the nuclear medicine doctors now want to give Jenny the maximum dose of radiation that her bone marrow can withstand because if some cancer survives the RAI treatment there is some probability it develops resistance to radioactive iodine.  To learn how much radiation that is, she'll be undergoing a bunch of tests in mid/late August leading into the RAI treatment.  It's possible that each test will require a trip to the Washington Hospital Center, though we're inquiring as to whether we can do some of it at the nearby Virginia Hospital Center.

Our parents are coming up big for us in August.  Becky and Mike are taking care of the kids at the river one week, Becky will be up here another week, and then Don & Ada will be here the last week of August when the RAI treatment happens.  We appreciate every day that we are so close to them.  The first week of school may be a bit of a challenge as it's not clear how much contact Jenny will be able to have at that point, and I'll be in my first week of teaching.  We'll be reaching out to our neighbors for help and I'm confident things will work out for us then.

First things first, though.  This week the kids are at camp and then we leave for vacation in San Francisco, Berkeley and Marin.  Really looking forward to seeing our old haunts, showing Rowan where she was born and (of course) catching up with all our friends and teammates in the ultimate community there.