Greg and I have a niece (his stepbrother Shane's stepdaughter) that has been battling cancer for the past year. Things have been looking up lately, she's been doing well. Then we got this message from her mother on their CarePages site :
"To the Family, Hello to you all. The Lord is our source of strength and we are going to need that strength starting now!!! Kate, Alex, and David (her bother & dad) just got home yesterday evening from a trip to Wyoming to Yellowstone. She took lots of photos and said,"Wow" how beautiful it was. Of course they did lots of walking on trails to take in the splendor of some of Gods creation that He has lovingly made available for us to see. But she also began having trouble with her legs. They just did not want to work right for her. She also had some numbing from the hips down. We watched her closely last night and were alarmed by what we saw. I called her Houston doctor and he said she needed to be in the emergency room and have an MRI and CT scan at Cook Childrens. So that is where Shane, David, Kate and myself spent the day. We did not get good news. Her tumor is back and has infiltrated the spinal column and pressure is building on the spinal chord, interrupting the signals from the brain so she cannot walk easily. They also see a lesion on the lung. So we are to be in Houston first thing Monday and go over the scans and discuss our options. Pray us through as it feels like a storm is surely coming our way. We Love You , Julie"
She is such a great girl. They spent the night at our house in May after my FIL's birthday party and I sat and talked to her for quite awhile. She was so excited b/c her 16th birthday was 2 weeks away.....she is just such an incredible spirit and this is just heartbreaking news. Please, please, please pray for her and for their family!! This has already been such a long and difficult road for them, and I have a feeling it is only going to get harder.
Thank you - hope you all are doing well.
UPDATE:
I just got an update from Shane about Kate. They are back at MD Anderson and she has just finished having her scans - here is the gist of what is going on:
Posted on CarePages 44 minutes ago:
"They (the team of doctors) are now preparing to go into surgery. Very touchy surgery. Their intent is to go into the spinal column and get the pressure off of the spinal cord. Right now the tumor is pressing the spinal cord all the way against the left wall of the spinal column. The result of this is Kate is not able to walk and has very little function in her legs. For you medical folks, she's at a T6 functioning level. Surgery should start somewhere around 2 hours from now and will last 4 to 6 hours. We met with her oncology doctor this morning, around 9am, and his only comments to us was to get this surgery done to give her a chance of some return and worry about the next plan of attack, on the cancer, later this week."
