A Good Sunday

Makenzie had a good day today.

• Drain Tube Out- The external drain tube left in from surgery was removed today and the opening stitched up. The drain tube was left in to drain off CSF (cerebro spinal fluid) to keep pressure in her head down just in case surgery plugged up her shunt. So... now we will see if her shunt is still working right or not. If the shunt is plugged, then CSF will begin to leak from the stitches in the next day or so. If that happens, then they will have to replace parts of her shunt.
• Bacteria??? - An infectious disease doctor stopped by to say they found some bacteria in Makenzie's CSF. But it was some sort of weird bacteria they had never seen, so they thought it might have lab contamination. They took new samples of CSF to retest. In the mean time, Kenzie has to start courses of 3 different antibiotics just to be safe. One of them, Vancomycin, makes her get itchy and rashy so she has to get IV Benadryl which makes her really tired.
• Movement!!! - Kenzie is gaining strength on her left side. She is able to move her fingers and squeeze your finger. She is able to roll over and shift much easier. She walked all the way around the ICU with a walker today. Her jaw muscles are in fine form. Her nurse has named her "Motor Mouth".
• A Clean Spinal MRI - No cancer has spread to her spine. So that is obviously great news.
• A Huge Thank You - To all who have brought in food, stuff for the kids, watched our boys, called, emailed, fasted, prayed, helped with blessings, visited, etc. We have had young kids in Kenzie's primary class (and I am sure others that we just don't know about) fast twice in one week for her. And we never even intended for anyone to fast twice, just Sunday or Wednesday. We have had people pray in sacrament meeting for her, in tears, who barely know who she is. We really appreciate everything everyone has done for Kenzie and our family.

The doctor thinks that she will be in the hospital for about 1 more week. She can't wait to get home. We still don't know anything else about the pathology of the portion of the tumor that was operable. But we are in no hurry. We will just get through this surgery and recovery... get home, then worry about what to do about the rest of the tumor that is not operable. For those who don't know her history... when she was first diagnosed three years ago, the entire tumor was in the top of her brain stem, intertwined among healthy brain cells, and not operable. She did chemo for about 3 years and it did not grow for those 3 years. She stopped chemo back in early November 2008. After that, the tumor began to grow and spread up out of her brain stem. This surgery was to remove the new growth as it was a solid mass and all operable. Of course, we did not want her tumor to grow, but we are grateful it grew in a place where it was removable. So now, we are sort of back to square one like we were 3 years ago... an inoperable tumor in the top of the brain stem. We are guessing that she will end up back on chemo for a while. But, we will see.