Mayo Day

It's been 5 months since we were in Reno for treatment and 9 months since Mike had his last CT scan at Mayo so… it was time to see how Mike's lungs are doing. So after a late night last night due to an overtime win against Waverly in basketball (woohoo) we got up early this morning and drove up to Rochester for another CT and to meet with our team of doctors there. The scan was read by a scan reader-radiologist , Dr. Olivier (radiation oncologist), Dr. Nichols (thoracic surgeon), and Dr. Molina (medical oncologist), and they all agreed that there is minimal to no growth in the 5 "nodules" in the right lung and maybe even slight shrinkage in one!!! While we would have loved to hear that the spots all shrank or were gone, we are so thankful that there is really no change in the last 9 months! So we get to keep doing what we are doing and living life to it's fullest and go back in 9 months for another CT scan.

We don't know if the treatments in Reno worked or if it's everything else we do on a daily basis that is making these nodules "behave so well" but we plan to keep working hard to keep them behaving!!! Dr. Olivier thinks it's our healthy living that is working, and told us to keep it up.

I recently read this quote and it really applies to our life the last almost 17 years of this cancer journey: " You don't know how strong you are, until being strong is the only choice you have". We have no choice but to pull up our big boy/girl panties and keep pressing on/being strong, and learning and growing each and every day! We love our life together and want to be here for each other and our family for as long as possible!

We just learned of the sudden death of a former UNI football teammate and friend of Mike's and it really makes you realize that we don't know how much time we have here on this earth so we need to make the most of it! Live well and love well!

Be blessed,

Paula