August 2012 Check-Up

This morning Tim met with Dr. Olson to review/discuss his most recent MRI (7.16.12).  First, he met with two different nurses.  One checked his vital signs (which were great!), and the second asked more specific questions and repeated the cognitive/coordination/etc. testing from last year (also great!).  Now that they have a baseline, they are able to make yearly comparisons.

Dr. Olson explained that the mass has grown over the course of the year.  Because it is not a "neat" shape, it is hard to describe its growth (he said the best visual he could give someone would be to describe its outline as a russet potato).  Basically, the mass has grown between 2mm and 6mm in various places.  This is considered "normal" when it comes to the growth rate of a meningioma.

As long as Tim is asymptomatic, and the growth remains at a normal pace, we will continue with the route of observation.  Hopefully our next update on this blog will be July or August of  2013.  :)

One Year Later

Yesterday (5.4.12) marked the one year "anniversary" of Tim's accident.  What a year it has been!  To remember the day, I got Tim a small cake from Publix.  It may sound odd, and we weren't really celebrating the fact that Tim has a mass (besides his brain) in his head, but we were celebrating God's goodness through it all.

 It is kind of hard to see, but the top has two pine trees on it.

One pine tree is standing up, the other has "fallen" down.

Tim with his mini-cake.

Just because life is about more than coincidences, I have to include this story on this blog.  Thursday (5.3.12) night while we were in the midst of getting K ready for bed, we received a text message from Tim's twin sister, J.  She and her daughter had hit heads during the day, and she ended up getting a concussion from it.  In her text she said that she would be going to get a CT scan the next day (5.4.12), and that she was a bit nervous knowing Tim's history with having a CT scan and "incidentaloma" (as Tim's friend, Dr. Archie calls it).  

When Tim read the text we just looked at each other and said, "No way!"  J would be having her CT exactly one year after Tim's accident.  So crazy!  We are praising the Lord with Joy, because her scan showed no tumor!  It is something how God used one year to reveal the tumor in Tim's head, and the following year to give his twin sister peace of mind knowing that she is brain-tumor-free.