Emily Update

(This is an E-mail I sent to my Promiseland Friends, I though you all would like to know)

Emily is having her second surgery this Monday at Loyola in Maywood. They need to be there at 5:30 am. for prep stuff. They don't know what time the surgery is to begin but it is expected to be around 5 hours long. As you can imagine sitting in the waiting room while your little girl is in surgery is extremely stressful and scary. Please pray for Crystal and Scott to have peace during the day as well as for Emily to have continued courage and that the surgery would be a success!

Crystal has been great about updating her blog with Info when she has it and I know she is planning on posting about the surgery. If you want to check it out you can click this link https://mail.willowcreek.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.crystalstarrs.blogspot.com/

As far as I understand it.... the reason the 2nd surgery is necessary is to help the Radio Active Iodine treatments be more successful. The Thyroid cells absorb the Radio Active Iodine which kills the cancer and that is why this cancer is so treatable. Emily has malignant tumors on the left side and cancerous lymph nodes on the right. These are made up of Thyroid cells so if they don't remove these with surgery they will absorb all the iodine and it will not get to all the smaller cells (like the ones in her lungs). Seeing as this surgery is so close to the previous one and Emily's little neck is still recovering the doctors may not be able to get to the left side in this surgery. The way I understand it is that they will be able to figure that out more once they start the surgery and can see how far her healing has progressed on the left side. Therefore, our prayer is that the Dr's will be able to get ALL the tumors/lymph nodes out in this surgery and not have to have a third surgery! That way Emily will be able to progress with her Iodine treatments and get on the road to recovery sooner!

This is the situation to the best of my non-medical brains understanding. =)

Thanks for all your continued prayers and support!