Wednesday Update

Good morning!

It is 10am on Wednesday morning and I just finished talking with Andrea on the phone. She has been a very brave little lady and we are so proud of her.

Yesterday at 7am we brought her into the hospital where we checked her in to the Nuclear Medicine Dept. and then had to leave her there at about 9am. She was full of hugs as we said goodbye, but she just followed the nurse to her room (we are not allowed to go into the area where the rooms are- but have a little spot in the entryway where we can sit and visit with her) and held her head up as she went—we were amazed at the strength God is giving her to get through this. Her day was filled with tests (blood tests, EKG, etc) and then she did some reading, watching movies and smiling at her two ‘only Czech speaking’ roomies. Not even the nurses speak any English this time, so she is in a challenging situation where she has to try to guess what they are telling her to do—lots of sign language and gestures.

Mark and Sara spent the morning with good friends, the Wilsons, and had a great time playing with their kids. Then around 5:00 Jen Nolan came and watched Mark and Sara while Al and I went to see Andy. We had such a wonderful time in our little entryway cubby-hole. We brought her dinner and then played Mexican Poker for 2 hours—there was lots of laughing and good spirits, so we are so thankful that God is protecting Andrea from feeling sad and gloomy.

Andrea had a bit of a long night—hit with a cold and one of her roomies is a bit of a snorer. The nurses came and woke them up at 5am—she hasn’t quite figured out why, but …oh well. Around 9:30 she had an injection to put in the radioactive mat (the radioactive material would attach itself to any thyroid/cancer cells if there are any remaining in her body and would show up on the scanner when they took the picture)—it was put into the top of her foot which surprised her a bit. Then she had to spend 30 minutes in a full body scanner. She wasn’t allowed to move at all and she said her head hurt because it was in an awkward position and she kept feeling itches all over. I get itchy just thinking about it.

We will have a meeting with the doctor on Thursday morning where he will give us the results of the scan. This will tell us if she needs more treatment or not. Then they said Andrea would be free to go home, so we are thrilled about that. She has been off of her thyroid pills for a couple weeks now, so she is pretty tired these days and will take the next couple days off school to regain her energy (if she feels she needs to) .

We ran into her surgeon in the hospital yesterday, (Prof Betka) who is a different doctor than the one who is administering her treatment, and he asked if we would bring Andrea to see him on Thursday.

We praise God for miracles and that He cares enough to have His hand in each of our lives.

Thank you for all your support and prayers. We are hopeful for good news tomorrow.