Dear Church Family & Friends,
WOW! Donna has had another clear PET Scan! Praise the Lord!
Donna had a PET Scan Tuesday morning over at Gwinnett Med. I brought her in around 9:00 am. She was brought back to the PET machine around 9:45 and the technician told us that she'd be out in about 90 minutes. This was a change from last year as the scan done last May was only 45 minutes. We didn't think much about it.
After the scan, the technician explained the reason why the scan was so long - the orders from her oncologist were unclear as to how much of the neck should be scanned. He has had instances where they had to have folks return because they did not scan enough for the doctor, so, he opted to do a whole body scan on Donna instead. He knew of Donna and her story (she is pretty well known in the local medical community) so he just took it upon himself to do the whole body scan. As we found out today, there are no active cancer cells in Donna's brain, or in the rest of her body for that matter! WOW!
This prompts the question, what is a PET Scan? (I copied this from the following web site: http://www.falange.demon.co.uk/explain-petscan.htm)
PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography. A PET scan uses a small dosage of a chemical called radionuclide combined with a sugar. This combination is injected into patient. The radionuclide emits positrons. A PET scanner will rotate around a patient's head to detect the positron emissions given off by the radionuclide. Because malignant tumors are growing at such a fast rate compared to healthy tissue, the tumor cells will use up more of the sugar which has the radionuclide attached to it. The computer then uses the measurements of glucose used to produce a picture which is color coded.
Translation: It is a new type of scan that can detect activity of malignant cells. Essentially, Donna has no malignant activity in her brain or in her body. Astonishing!
The game plan now is to have an MRI in the next 6 months and then to have a PET Scan completed again next May. Our thinking is to go in 6 month intervals.
Then, I'll need to book a cruise in the summer to celebrate the clean scan and Donna's birthday next Thursday!
Also, Donna & I will be participating in the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation Race for Research on Saturday, June 28 at the Mall of Georgia. They help raise money for brain tumor research. If you can, we'd like to ask if you could contribute to this organization. If you can, that would be great. You can make checks out to the 'Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation'. You can mail the checks to our home and we'll bring them with us to the event. They will accept any amount that you feel led to give and it is tax deductible. Our address is 2660 Whitlock Trail, Lawrenceville, GA 30043. Or, if you'd like, you can sign up to participate with us in the Race by signing up. The cost is only $15.00.
As always, we appreciate your prayers. We believe that the Lord has let you all experience this miracle to help strengthen your faith in Christ!
Our prayer requests continue to be for 1.) The Lord's will and not our will to be done in this situation, 2.) For the next scan to be clear, 3.) For this tumor never ever to reappear, 4.) For all of Donna's side effects to disappear.
Thank-you all! Have a blessed summer! We love you!
In His Wonderful Name, Service & Love,
Frank
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