MRI finally happened!!

We have pretty much been on a roller coaster since December but today felt like the wildest emotional ride yet!! Our day began at 6:30am. We got the MRI done by about 10:00, met with the oncologist, the neurosurgeon and had a CT scan by 2:30!!. The oncologist said that it looked like there was new growth in Rachel's abdomen. She quickly ordered a CT scan of the abdomen for today. (Her kind of cancer typically doesn't spread from the nervous system but the shunt drains her spinal fluid into her abdominal cavity so it's a possibility in Rachel's case.) We met with the neurosurgeon as well and she thought we might have new tumors on the abdominal wall. Needless to say, we were moving from office to office and finally got the results of the scan at about 2:00. What looked like something on the MRI was NOTHING on the CT scan. We are incredibly relieved because spreading would have changed our game plan completely. Don't get me wrong, we didn't get great news today but we walked out of there with better news than we thought we'd have. The new drugs pretty much did what the last drugs did. The cancer has grown a little in the places that it already existed. This means we have to try new drugs again. The one we are looking at trying will be outpatient and shouldn't be too hard on her system. There's a good chance her hair will fall out again but if this drug works we're willing to sacrifice it! Every chemo drug works differently and sometimes it takes a few tries to find the right one. The chemo is keeping the cancer growth to a minimum but our goal is to at least stop it where it is. Rachel is doing far better today with chemo than she would be doing without it. Overall her cancer has grown less than 10% since treatment has started and the goal is still that she has to have radiation to be cured. Statistically, the only people that have survived with her kind of cancer were radiated on. The chemo is our tool to get Rach as close to 3 as possible so that she has a chance to get radiation. This is just another day in what we hope to be a long process to finding a cure for her.