Julia had chemo treatment #6 this morning. It was only VinCristine so there should not be too many side effects. Her blood counts were checked and have rebounded from last week. Everything has improved so surgery was confirmed for Thursday. Surgery should last about 6 hours. Dr. Mattei (the surgeon) will remove the tumor and Julia’s kidney first. He will check out her surrounding lymph nodes and one adrenal gland to see if they also need to be removed. If everything is going well, he will then take a look at her lung and perhaps biopsy it. This is a second procedure so he is going to make sure everything is okay before proceeding. Julia should be in the hospital for only 4-5 days. The initial plan is she will get her next chemo treatment on Monday in the hospital and then be discharged. She will begin radiation treatments on Tuesday (these are done as an outpatient at Penn). We will be staying in town at Aunt Donna and Uncle Howard’s house (thank you!) while the outpatient radiation treatments are completed. It will be so much easier than having to drive into town every day. Julia will have 6 radiation treatments (Tuesday thru Tuesday – they don’t do treatments over the weekend). She will start chemo again on Tuesday, January 26 – on our way back home.
We will post an update on Thursday evening after her surgery. Thanks for all your prayers and support.