Well, where do I begin?  It has been way too long since I have posted an update. So much has happened since the last post.  We left a few days after Jen's MRI for our family vacation to Disney World.  Right before we left we received a copy of her April and October MRI's along with the Radiology Reports. I immediately dug right in and started looking at all of the images and to my dismay, I read the radiology reports. The report from the April MRI said that there had been growth and that it now measured .8mm. The radiology report from October said that there had been growth and that the tumor now measured 1.2cm. For those of you that don't know, her tumor was approximately 2 cm when she was first diagnosed.  I was absolutely in shock once again. When we had met with the Dr. he had said that there had been change, and that there was less enhancement, but he wasn't sure what the changes meant. We immediately called him and he assured us that we still needed to watch and wait, because many things could be going on. UGH. Not what I wanted to hear. Unfortunately these crazy tumors are so unpredictable, and of course there is no research being done, that he really truly has no answers. So needless to say it put a little crimp on vacation, and we tried our hardest to put it out of our minds and just enjoy ourselves. 

We returned from vacation just in time to get ready for Christmas. Although it was a struggle for me personally to get into the spirit, we did have a good Christmas. 

We got Jenna tickets to go see Dancing with the stars tour for Christmas and we just returned from that. We also happened upon three tickets to the Miley Cyrus concert in St. Louis last night. I took Jen and Abbi to the concert and Tyse and Blaine stayed at the Hotel and went swimming. We had a great time. Abbi fell asleep about midway through the concert, I don't know how she slept through all of the little girls screeming. I have never heard anything so loud in my life. Jenna had a great time at both DWTS and Miley. What an experience!

Sunday night after we returned from DWTS Jen was laying on the sofa, and she had an upset tummy, and all of a sudden both of her hands went numb. They stayed that way for about an hour, so needless to say, I panicked and immediately called Dr. Raffels office and spoke with the resident on call. He of course didn't know her case personally, but suggested that we not wait until morning, but go have a scan done right away. We had no idea what to do, because we knew Des Moines couldn't or wouldn't do a scan right away, so we called Mayo, and the Dr. there pulled up her chart, and said that we could wait until morning and call Dr. Raffel to see what he would like to do. He didn't think that where the tumor is located that it would produce that type of symptom. So we let her go to sleep, I say her because Tyse and Myself got absolutely no sleep. We called Dr. Raffel the next morning and he agreed with Mayo, and said just to monitor her, and if it happened agin that we should call him. She got up the next morning and felt perfectly fine and it hasn't happened again.  So we still have no idea why it happened. 

I am going to post some pics tonight in the photo album of her at DWTS and the Miley concert.

Please keep her in your prayers.

If anyone has fundraising ideas or would like to help me with some of the things I have been working on please e-mail me.  I am going to really kick this research thing into high gear. We have got to do something!

Jolece