News from toronto

well here we are in Toronto and it's Friday. On Monday we went to Toronto general hospital as instructed for blood work and then returned on Tuesday morning for a CT Scan and an ultra sound. I wasn't feeling convinced that surgery was going to go ahead...call it instinct or whatever you want, but there were questions and such that made me suspicious. Because of the results of the CT Scan we were told they now wanted to do an ultra sound, so we proceeded to that dept. we were told that a radiologist from Princess Margaret was coming over to perform the test himself and that he may do a specialized test called and contrast ultra sound. We met him and after to your basic ultra sound he did want to do the one with contrast, so we changed rooms and joined two other Drs.. As they were doing the test I heard talk of the liver and wanted to tell them they were looking in the wrong place but something told me they know what they are doing. After sometime they discussed calling in earls surgeons, who came in short order actually leaving a surgery to check in with Earl. Dot dot dot...after much measuring and discussions they were done and Dr Jewett asked to peak to me outside. He told me in a very kind and caring way that the tumor had grown again and because the vena cava was full of tumor it had to find a new path, that being the liver. Under these new circumstances the surgery would be too high risk and performing could very well cost Earl his life.

So we will return home and meet on Tuesday with dr Wong to discuss chemotherapy again!

Earl being the trooper that he is took the news very very well, I think he feels he dodged a bullet in the surgery and is keen to move on to what he calls PLAN B

I on the other hand feel like my cup runneth over with stress!
But with Earls positive attitude and all our friends family and supporters we will carry on. To those of you who continue to pray for us please don't stop for we have not lost hope. I still believe that God has a special purpose for Earl and he will keep working on it.

Please know that your thoughts and prayers give us life and encouragment.
We love you
Debbie, Darby and Earl

It's August......! Hockey starts in 1 month!

Hi Everyone, Earl and I had a great time in Montreal and after a brief but fun visit home (Earl went to Jeff and Natalie's for respite and I got away with some friends for some quilting R&R) we headed out to Calgary and Banff. We had such a nice visit and Banff just has this way of melting off the stress so much so that you can feel it as it leaves your body. One of the things Earl really wanted to do, let's call it his bucket list was white water rafting. (just so you know it's on my list too) We did it, we can now say we conquered the Kicking Horse River and it was a BLAST, only Earl was a little frightened. By chance we were able to hook up with a good friend of ours, Kyle Chernetz who is a WWR guide and so it helped us both feel a lot more comfortable than we would have felt had he not been our guide. I highly recommend it to affiliate any stress.

There is news about Earl, so here we go. The biopsy results indicate that Earl's cancer is in fact osteogenic sarcoma, so now that we have wasted several months we can continue on with the first plan. Surgery. Earl has been referred to a surgeon in Toronto for surgery to remove the tumor from his body. I won't give any details, yet but after our Medical Video Conference on Tuesday August 16th we hope to have more information. If surgery is offered and Earl decides to go ahead, it will take place in Toronto. The tumor continues to grow and at the last CT scan the kidney was 16.3cm! Look it up...that means it is close to 2x the size of his other kidney. Because of the continued growth Earl is experiencing increasing pain and is having difficulties with peeing and his leg is swollen. Not fun at all.

Stay in touch, and please hold Earl up in prayer as this is a very frightening time for him.

Love you all Debbie!