The very best news of my whole entire life

This day has been jam-packed. As I go to bed tonight, I am feeling so overwhelmed with happiness and gratitude and information and... I don't know, just everything! I can't stop crying and I have a major headache. I guess maybe I just want to burst with joy (and maybe a good deal of stress, as well).

So the best news of the day is that we got the pathology report from Steven's tumor and the necrosis (cell death in the tumor) was 91%! The margins were negative (which means they got it all). I can't remember what I've written, but we were hoping for anything greater than 90%. This means that we get the "short" track of chemo, which is 20 more weeks (that translates to 12 rounds). It will be the same kinds of chemo that he has done already. And best of all, my understanding is that his prognosis is significantly better. I only spoke briefly with the surgeon about the results, so I don't have more details. But this is great news. In fact, when I told Steven, he was radiant. He said, "This is the very best news I've ever heard in my whole entire life!"

We had fun taking down 70 days worth of links from his chemo chain--days he would have done had the tumor responded poorly. Addie and her cousin walked around with them on their heads pretending they were long locks of hair that dragged on the floor.



In other news (literaly), the local news did a story on Tim, the boy who had rotationplasty the week before Steven did. If you haven't seen it yet, you can watch it here. Steven stayed up to watch it on the 10 o'clock news and got a kick out of seeing Dr. Jones on TV. Maybe staying up late was the ticket, because he finally slept through the night last night. Celebrate! Now if only I could get Laura to... .

We spoke with a prosthetist at Hanger, a company here which has been highly recommended. We learned a lot and to make a long story short, they honestly thought we would do just as well or better by going to Shriners. The amputees (and parents) I've spoken to have varying opinions on the matter, it is so hard to sort everything out. Nothing has been firmly decided here, but my goal is to get the best fit for Steven and if Shriners is the one to do it, then that is where we will go.

And once again I'm bursting with gratitude. So many people have shown us so much support in so many ways. I'm starting to sound kind of cliche here, but seriously, how do I even begin to express my gratitude? I could dedicate a whole blog just to thank people for helping us and then update it several times a day. This is a pretty poor attempt, but THANK YOU!