irishfield

5 deer in the laneway tonight.. first I've seen in a while.

I was going to stay out of this, but I don't see what you're saying 206. The kid's... sorry adult's (he was 32 after all) mother is a senior level civil servant.

You got that right Bri !

Thanks guys, this will give you some insight into what keeps her ticking...

A picture from yesterday evening. Starbucks and Honey Garlic Chicken!!! St. Mike's is the only hospital in Toronto that Jen will eat their food. They still make their own...

I wish I could go along with that Davey.. but we'll have to wait and see where she goes from here. Chemo.. radiation or a time game. We could get lucky and find out the "ball" was a benign tumour caused by radiation, but the outer "belt" tumour tells us at about 99% certainty that Ewing's is still alive and well in her body unfortunately. BTW... we're all home in Penetang! She's eating and moving very well for someone that just had her head split open 48 hours ago.

Believe it or not.... discharged at noon today!! We'll see where she goes from here...

We showed up this morning to see Jen and she'd already been moved from ICU to a regular floor room in less than 24 hours since surgery. Shortly after that she was up and to the bathroom on her own! Doesn't even have an IV hooked to her anymore and she had left surgery with no drains in. Arm function back close to the way it was pre Thanksgiving

She looks healthy, knows what's going on and talking just fine. Her vision has returned to clear and she can read the clock on the wall outside her room, at least 30 feet away. Something she couldn't do yesterday with her blurred vision. She currently can't feel her arms, but can move her fingers. We hope this is just a similar brain reaction like the previous tumour removal last June, where her arm was paralyzed for a few days. We saw her briefly and have left her to rest for the night

4.5 hours later her surgeon came out to talk with us and show us the pictures of what she had and what he did, while the rest of his team was waking Jen up. The 5+cm "ball" came out in one piece and just looks like a white tennis ball. This tumour was under her dural layer and had pushed a large (well yah 5+ cm) cavity into her brain mass. She also had a flat "belt like" tumour in the same area on the outside of the dura and he has sent them both as seperate samples for pathology, to see if they are both Ewing's again.... or of all things hopefully some other form of sarcoma or a radiation caused tumour. We'd be even happier to hear benign, but not much chance of that. Thanks for the virtual ear, she's gonna have another long road to travel from here.

A bit late... but she's in the OR as of 8:30 !!! Could be 3 hours.. could be 6, won't know until she's out.

Well folks... you can't make this crap up !! Waited all day for what was supposed to be "noonish" surgery again and at about 6pm, with us totally fed up, Jen's surgeon appeared on the floor just as fed up as ourselves. A gun shot wound this morning bumped some stuff and then something else bumped him out of the 4pm spot they promised him. Then it was maybe you can have the OR at 9pm..contact us at 7:30 to see if it's still available. Instead of going with the unknown certainty.... he offered to cancel all three of his scheduled morning surgeries to put Jen in that time frame. Gonna be three pissed off families come 7:45am tomorrow, but Jen is in that spot now, they'll have to deal with it!

Well guys... it's been 4 years and 2 days since she was first diagnosed. I've gone from a hyper .. can't sit still... to someone that can spend 20 hours a day sitting in a chair without a book or TV. Am I screaming on the inside sure, but doing the "duck paddle" instead for the sake of Jen, two other kids and a wife that is already mentally exhausted and out cold in a chair. Tumour has grow almost a cm since last Sunday. Now about 6cm, her vision is blurred, etc. although the steroids they have her on have helped with the right side mobility.

I wish I did guys... and thanks for caring! Oh.. what a week it's been!l After 7 days of waiting for surgery..... Jen into pre-op at 11:30 this morning and then wheeled into Surgery about 12:30. An hour later her Surgeon came galloping into the waiting room and motioned us over. The SENIOR Anethesiologist screwed up and somehow put a line in to her carotid artery instead of the vein in her neck. Requiring an emergency retraction of the line... Jen woken back up and surgery scrubbed until at least tomorrow. I hate to ask what else they can possible do to this women..

Supposed to be # 2 for surgery in the morning ! Her surgeon damn near duked it out with the chief surgeon today... but he got what he needed, an OR !

Everything went to hell in a handbasket about 9 pm last night.... her Surgeon is livid with the OR scheduling staff. He called me last night about 11pm, while we had Jen out to the Firkin on Yonge for some food, and read me a scathing letter to the OR scheduling staff, that "Jen will be on the list after the first short procedure scheduled on Monday morning or she will suddenly become an "A" case and they'll have no choice." So hopefully that happens... as by Monday she's going to be an A case on her own, as this thing continues to grow and her mobility lessens.

Thanks Castaway, but we're fine and thankfully aren't paying for a hotel everynight while we wait... as we have Jen's apartment about 30 minutes from the hospital. Jen was in Que for the last OR of the night at about 9pm last night... and then a Helicopter landed on the roof at 9:10, followed by her nurse running into her room and declaring "you can eat" "Sorry" ! $%(*@$*(@$(* Been moved up the priority list this morning from a "C" to a "B" and has been told 99% chance she'll get in within the next 8 hours. Sure hope so as her headaches are getting worse and considering this thing grew at the rate of at least a 1/2 cm per week, in the 10 weeks since a clear MRI was done July 23rd... it has most likely grown another 0.5cm in the time she's been lying here NPO all week.

Well another day of NPO and no surgery. We snuck her out to the 3 Brewers on Yonge St. for a 9pm supper to try and top her up again before midnight. Hopefully they fit her in tomorrow, or you may hear of a disturbance at St. Mike's in the news!

Got her MRI at 4am... still NPO and waiting (now 12:45pm). She may get surgery later today or tonight, but we're getting that "ground hog day" feeling, like her last time here, that she's not going to be able to eat anything all day... and then find she gets passed over.. repeat tomorrow. Time will tell. She's getting a tad testy with no sleep or food.

Thanks folks! Leah and I just got into Jen's Toronto apartment, hopefully for a full night and some much needed sleep. Jen saw her neuro at 8:10am, was admitted through emerg to jump the system... blood work, ECG. lung xray, etc and finally got a neuro floor room at 2pm. About 7pm she was taken to have a special CT that shows the blood vessels in her brain. At the current time, 11:45pm, still waiting for an MRI that is supposed to happen before morning. She's NPO as of midnight, so hopefully surgery proceeds tomorrow unless the consults with her Medical Oncol, Radiation Oncol and the Neuro decide another approach is needed before tumour removal. We've seen the CT from Sunday night, the tumour is perfectly round and looks like someone jammed a tennis ball into her head.

Thanks folks... guess I'd better get to bed. 4:45 is gonna come quick for us to leave for the city. Might be a day or two before I'm back on line, but will update when I can.

Well I posted good news a week or so back, but here we are again. I've lost track of what "chapter" this is. Leah had picked Jen up in the city last Tuesday and she was very slow to get going and in the truck. Not unusual for her, but this time something just wasn't right. Over the past 3 or 4 days Jen has gone downhill quickly and lost most of the motor control of her right side. Arm especially, but her "unattached" leg isn't working that well either. She's had a few arm seizures over the past month or so and Sunnybrook had already upped her anti-seizure meds after the first one happened. Jen was already scheduled for an MRI on Oct 21st and a Dr consult on Oct 29th, and figured she could stick it out until those dates. With the rapid regressive nature of her mobility the past few days and the "not a hope in hell" of climbing stairs to bed last night (a first through all this) She decided this morning to cry Uncle and to go to the hospital. We ran her all the way back to the city, to Sunnybrook Emerg today (Sunday Oct 12th). Spent over 8 hours there, including a CT with contrast and by 9 pm tonight we learned that she has a new tumour on the left side of her brain that is causing the pressure to shut her right side down.This thing has grown in less than 2.5 months, as there was nothing there on July 23rd, and it's 5cm (2 inches) in diameter. The only thing that is remotely good about this one is that it appears to be on the outside of her brain and not in it, but they won't know for sure until they get in there. With a resident neuro consult in emerg, some phone calls to his "boss" and conference calls, it was decided that she will go back to St. Michaels's for surgery. Dr. Spears will do a third craniotomy on Jen, as it was felt he was the best person to do it... knowing just what he's done in the past. Jen was discharged from Sunnybrook Emerg about 9:50pm. We then spent almost 2 hours trying to fill her prescriptions on a Sunday night of a long weekend. 3 Shoppers Drug Marts. 1st one on Bayview closed 2 minutes before we arrived, and the next 2 pharmacists barely spoke English at Young and Eglington and Eglington Square. 2nd store only had 1 of 3 scripts and of course all were written on the same paper. The 3rd store questioned the script, thinking Leah was a drug dealer, and wouldn't fill them until they got a hold of the neuro that wrote it. Good luck with that, he'd only come in to see Jen specifically and had already left. Jen and I were taking bets on whether Leah would come out with drugs by midnight, without drugs by midnight or that we'd have to pick her up at the local police station for assaulting a pharmacist and post bail for her to get her out. We are back home as of 1:40AM.... THANKS Shoppers Drug Mart, you cost us almost 2 hours! We finally got food into us all, for the first time since breakfast, at 11:50 PM just before the closet Subway to the Shoppers closed. Surgery may happen as early as Tuesday coming. We are to have her back in the city and at Dr. Spears clinic for 8am Tuesday morning with no food after midnight. Suggesting he's going to do an MRI and get her in for surgery that day if possible. With St. Mike's you never know, one helicopter on the roof can bump an entire day of scheduled surgeries. Think good thoughts and we'll update when we can. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving dinner, with Kristal (our youngest) taking the apron and preparing for 9 people. Then some pumpkin carving with the 22 rifle, for a little bit of fun before what comes next.

The real key is to make sure you don't use fuel with ethanol in it and that's not really that hard to do.

Oreo cookies! LMAO Enjoy your trip Connie!