Looks promising

Whew - what a day! Okay - we met with the brain specialist and he said I am a prime candidate for Cyberknife. It really is quite remarkable and a non-invasive procedure. I am scheduled to have more scans this Friday and then my doctor will "map" out the radiation to target the 4 tumors within a hair width of the healthy tissue. One tumor is small and he feels it will take 1 treatment. The other 3 will take 5 consecutive days of treatment. I will remain on the steroids until the treatments are done and will then taper down from there. It sounds like within a month or so, everything should be done or close to it. They will then wait 4 weeks to do a scan to see what progress has been made. The brain tumors don't respond instantly to the radiation - more like a slow cooker. They will not do whole brain radiation again at this time because the damage it could do would outweigh its benefits. It is possible with the Cyberknife that the tumors will not completely disappear but will shrink, become stable and not grow for 1-2 years. I finished my whole brain radiation last year on 4/9/09 so that radiation worked for a year. This radiation is much stronger and more concentrated so we are praying for a lot longer!!

We left his office very hopeful and felt like this is merely a bump in the road. I will continue to get chemotherapy throughout this process. I may need a few extra naps the week I do both but it doesn't sound like the radiation will affect me much.

Thank you so much your prayers today. I definitely felt peace as we entered the doctor's office. We celebrated with margaritas and tacos tonight! I do make a good margarita.