Monday, January 19

This morning Dad went for his treatment as usual. Dr. Hardacre and Dr. Holmes apparently discussed the situation with each other and some other doctors as well. The plan is to remove the lymph node, biopsy it and go from there. There are several different scenarios and "ways" this could go so we will just have to PRAY, wait and see. Our plan is this..tomorrow he will go for radiation treatment as usual. On Wednesday he will have a normal treatment as well and meet with Dr. Hardacre who wants to numb his throat and go in to look around. It is rare that this type of cancer would "jump" to the other side, so both doctors want to look around and explore further. Again, the lymph node has only been diagnosed as "suspicious" at this point, but we want to be very thorough in the investigation. On Thursday we will go to Birmingham to have the lymph node cut out by Dr. Holmes. It is an outpatient surgery done at St. Vincents. The surgery is scheduled for 1:00 and should take about 45 minutes. On Friday, he can choose as to whether or not he wants his treatment that day. If so, great. If not, they will most likely continue on Monday. He only has 12 remaining on the left side and Dr. Hardacre indicates that they should be able to finish them up without disruption even with this surgery. (That is good news.) We will then wait for the biopsy results and move to the next step. I do recall Dr. Hardacre mentioning that he wanted to set Dad up for another PET scan. I am not aware of that being scheduled yet. They are hard to go through and then you have to WAIT for the results. Also, Dad is meeting with a Dr. Becdoch on Friday afternoon here in Decatur to talk about the possibility of chemotherapy. I don't know much about chemo, but Dr. Hardacre did mention that if he did have to add it, it would most likely be a pill. Finally, we will go back to Birmingham on Monday to see Dr. Holmes for a follow up. Hopefully by then we will have the big picture and it will be bright.

It is overwhelming today and we will just have to pray and wait for everything to unfold. Again, God has His plan and He will reveal it to us. Please pray for this whole situation and our entire family. I will keep you posted. Thank you all!