As of today, hubby and I have decided what we want to do about Annie.

If you remember, we were deciding whether to go ahead and schedule surgery to remove the tumor, OR to watch and wait, doing an MRI every 90 days.

After lots of prayer and deliberating, we have decided to delay surgery for a while (indefinitely) and wait and watch the tumor and re-evaluate in 90 days.

We made our decision based on several factors:
* Her neurosurgeon recommended we wait. He said with no hesitation whatsoever, and I quote, “If it were my child, I would wait.” At this point we have no reason to do anything other than what her highly-trained, expert-in-his-field physician has recommended. He said, “Usually when I cut open someone’s brain to do surgery, its because there is a pressing, life-threatening reason why. I’m not seeing that in this case.”

*Annie still has no symptoms. If the tumor were causing the slightest inconvenience or pain to Annie, we would go ahead and do surgery ASAP. The tumor is ONE CENTIMETER, not obstructing the flow of ANYTHING.

*Surgery is always risky. There are always side-effects, in this case, loss of motor skills, loss of speech, etc. And even beyond the risks of surgery, there is a risk of spread of fatal infection in a hospital environment. We’ve all heard those stories, however rare, of those scary flesh-eating things that spread from patient to patient in a hospital. If the BENEFITS OF SURGERY OUTWEIGHED THE RISKS, then yes, by all means, we would do it.

*The tumor does not look like cancer or infection or anything harmful; it appears to be a benign mass, very slow-growing and contained.

We’re just not sure, like her surgeon said, that the symptoms warrant the risks of surgery at this point. As a matter of fact, it appears that surgery would be more dangerous to Annie at this point than leaving the tumor in place.

And furthermore, God gave us an immune system, whose job is to fight off infections and invaders and things like tumors. I do not believe it is completely unreasonable to expect that if we strengthen her immune system, bombard her little body with extra nutrients and whole food and good fats and really good sleep, that her immune system just might begin to fight this off and her little brain just might begin to heal itself. I don’t believe that is totally unreasonable, and definitely worth a try.

AND. God is NOT FINISHED HERE YET. We’re still praying for a miracle. Its not too late for a miracle. Like my friend Doug said, “It ain’t over yet.”

I know everyone means well, but we have felt a TON OF PRESSURE from multiple people to go ahead and do surgery yesterday. This has been an extremely difficult decision, and one that we have not arrived at easily or taken lightly. We have gone without food for days as we prayed about what to do. We have consulted five different medical experts. We believe we are doing the very best thing we can do for our child at this point.

With that said, I’m disabling comments for this post. Disagree with me all you want….but not on my blog. 😉

And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. 🙂

Thank you for respecting our decision, letting us enjoy our summer, and talking to us about anything but brain tumors and surgery for 90 days.