I am officially legal to drive, again. Woohoo!! I had my appointment with my neurologist on Wednesday and she said I could drive, as long as it wasn’t in front of her house. She said that my EEG from a couple of weeks ago looked good. My brain isn’t “twitchy”, which means it’s not getting epileptical spikes, which would indicate seizure activity. That is very good news for me. A little more comforting when I’m out running around, that I don’t have a twitchy brain. So, I went to town with kids in tow for the first time yesterday, in months. Actually, I just had Trent. It was actually really fun. I felt like such a grown up. It’s hard to explain the feeling I get when I can start driving again to people who have never had that privilege taken away, but just know it’s pure joy! The other thing that my neurologist said, is that she did her residency at OHSU and worked with Dr. Neuwelt, the new neuro-oncologist that I’ll be seeing this week. She said that he is great, and that she loves him. That is SO comforting to me, that he has a great bedside manner. You never know with doctors that have a lot of medical “power”. He is the head of the blood brain barrier program at OHSU. And a lot of these brain doctors seem to let the phrase “It’s not like it’s brain surgery” go to their head….if you know what I mean.

I also had my first appointment with an acupuncturist this week. I have a lot of pain down the right side of my body, stemming from the temporalis muscle that has to get stretched and pulled away for each brain surgery that I have. I’ve heard wonderful things about acupuncture and pain, so I thought I would give it a shot. It’s a little Chinese lady and she was full of information. She told me that I should definitely NOT be feeding my body 2 cloves of garlic everyday, as I do in my juicing. Marvin wasn’t too crazy about me going to an acupuncturist, but I think that alone was worth the money, for him. She said that that much garlic can inflame my digestive track and trigger inflammation in the rest of my body. Interesting. So for now, I’ve removed the garlic from my juice, and will just stick to cooking with it, instead. She also gave me an herbal “formula”, as she’s an herbalist, too. It’s supposed to detox my body and give me more energy. I had quite a bit before, and have been detoxing for awhile, but I figure it definitely can’t hurt. I’ll keep you posted about how the pain management goes, in case you may be wanting to try it out. I will see her weekly for awhile.

The other thing that I have decided to do is to hire a nutritionist. There is a lady who’s name I’ve come across several times over the past few years. She is a nutritionist in Utah, that has a PhD and specializes in brain tumors. I think that I’ve fine-tuned my diet pretty well, but there is only so much that I can do on my own. She will monitor my bloodwork, looking for different things that I’m lacking or have too much of. These are things such as copper, vitamin levels, heavy metals, etc…I sent her all of my pathology and MRI reports, as well as other medical history. She will send me a tailored report, once she has my bloodwork, of what kind of a diet/supplemental/exercise program I should be on. She is almost always a keynote speaker at brain tumor conferences. She just attended the conference at UCLA, for the latest treatments for brain tumors. That is so comforting that she is educated on all of the latest treatments for brain tumors. I think she will be a great source of information for me!!

This coming week is a big week for us. I have an MRI on Thursday, which I will take the CD with the scan on it to my appointment with Dr. Neuwelt on Friday. He will review it while we are there, and then we’ll talk about the next step. I’m working very hard on laying this one down at my father’s feet on a daily basis. It’s so easy to let satan creep into my thoughts. Your prayers will be especially coveted this week for peace, comfort and a great scan. A clean scan would be a miracle, which we are praying for! A stable scan would be amazing, as well. If the tumor has grown at all, I will probably have to start treatment now, rather than wait until after we get back from Maui, but we are standing with confidence that it will be good news!

Other than that, it’s life as usual. Tyler is sooo ready for Kindergarten. He is bored and just doesn’t understand why there are so many rainy days on the internet (weather forecast) all the time. He also can’t wait for Trent to not be a baby anymore, because babies are just so breakable. He means that Trent knocks over the things that he’s building all the time. So…cute. Trent is growing so fast. We think he’ll be bigger than Tyler. I’m trying to tell Tyler to be nice to him all the time, because one day the tables may turn. Trent will be getting his first haircut tonight. I’ve finally decided that since his hair is so long that it’s wrapping up around his ears, that it’s time. It’s just so incredibly cute! He has these perfect white haired ringlets. It will be sad to see them go, but the waitress at Applebees the other night asked if “she” needed a high chair…

We are so blessed by all of you who are praying for us, sending us cards, emails, messages….it’s so humbling. We’ll keep you posted on our news this week.