Not What We Were Expecting...

Last Wednesday, Caleb went in for another EUA (exam under anesthesia) to check his eyes. On his Aug. 31st appointment, Dr. Weiss found a small regrowth of one of the tumors, thus this exam to do another check. Dave, Wayne, Gayle, and I waited anxiously with Kyle and Melissa. The EUAs in June and July brought such great news, that we thought Caleb was "home free", but the August exam gave us a little jolt into reality. This time around, we were all a little more apprehensive. When Kyle and Melissa got paged, they waited in the little room for Dr. Weiss to arrive for quite awhile. When he got there, he shut the door and they were in that dreaded room for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, Dr. Weiss came out, but Kyle and Melissa did not follow him. I know all of our stomachs took a nose dive at what we were anticipating hearing. Again, it seemed like forever before they came out and when they did, Melissa kicked Caleb's diaper bag, hit the wall, and crumpled to the ground sobbing. The news that came to them was that Caleb had more tumors and Dr. Weiss was able to freeze some, but not all, of them. There was one close to his optic nerve in the left eye. As a surgeon, he gave them the blunt news without much encouragement in his message and delivery. I guess that's a surgeon's job, but... We all gathered around the young family with much love and joined them back at their apartment for the evening, joined by Ryan, Alyssa, and Kai. The next day, they had an appointment with Dr. Pendergrass, Caleb's oncologist. The Hancocks went to the appointment and Gayle sat in taking notes. They felt much more encouraged after that meeting. Dr. Pendergrass spoke more encouragingly and said it wasn't entirely unusual to see more tumors and he wanted to wait until next month after another EUA to see what options he wanted to pursue. We felt that if Dr. Pendergrass didn't see the urgency to treat the tumors immediately, that was a good thing. The whole Hancock family has a Disneyland trip planned next month at Thanksgiving time and Melissa hesitantly asked Dr. Pendergrass whether they should still take the trip. He strongly encouraged them to take this trip, telling them they need to have some fun. Little Peanut is such a hoot and it's so hard to believe, at times, that he has had this blasted disease for 6 of his 9 months of life. His pediatrician is so encouraged by his growth and development and he is in the 50 percentile in weight and 70 percentile in height. He crawls, pulls himself up to stand, stands briefly by himself, and babbles a few words (including "up"!) His scrunchy-faced smile cracks us all up! We know God has a plan for this little guy and we are excited to see what it is!