Tori Update

I am not sure if this is so much as an update as a chance to define the information I have already given you. After a visit with Dr. Elizabeth Valentine , Dr. of Internal Medicine and Oncology, we have the following definates.
Tori has Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma. This is the most common form of thyroid cancer, tends to hit woman more than men with no real reason or cause known. It is a slow growing cancer, and the most treatable. Next week Heather and Tori are taking a trip to Boston, Mass to the Shriners Hospital. At this time they will meet with case workers, the physician team that will be working on her and just get shown around the hospital in general. They will come home from this visit with a surgery date. She will have the thryoid removed and to be honest they can not tell until they are doing the surgery whether they must remove the entire thyroid or can just take the side infected by the cancer. Most surgeries end up with the entire thyroid being taken. After this surgery she should be home quickly, within a day or 2. Then for at least a week my house will basically be under quarentine. No friends, no people in and out, her mom and brother can not be here, this is due to risk of germs, as she will have a very, very , low immunity to the everyday germs we carry. I will be the only one she is exposed to at that time, better get my clorox bottles stocked up!
After a approx. 5 to 6 weeks healing time she will go back to the hospital. She will be administered radioactive iodine. Just a very small dose at first then a scan is done that will show any thryoid residue, active cancer cell, anything missed in the surgery. Then she gets the full dose and comes home again. This time my house will be under quarentine again even more so. Not because of germs, but because she herself will be radioactive and can share that with others. I cannot get any closer than 6 feet from her. She has to be in her room alone, the front bathroom must be for her use only. I will be stocking up on paper plates, cups and plastic forks , etc. I must wash her laundry seperate from anything else in the house. This should really get interesting. But the good news is doing it this way, she avoids things like coming home vomiting, or losing her hair and all that stuff we associate with chemo and radiation. She should heal pretty quickly, the real downfall is she will spend the rest of her life taking medicine to replace the hormones her thyroid provides naturally.
One week from Saturday she has an appointment with her neurosurgeon, this will be on hold until the thryoid cancer is taken care of but they will formulate the plan for the neurosurgery.
This is going to be a crazy time for all of us, Joshua will be with me while Heather is with Tori, when she is home I will have to take time off work here and there but we can only get through this one step at a time.

We did finally sit down this morning and tell Tori everything. She had a great birthday and to tell you the truth she took the news better than myself, Heather and TJ did. I guess because she in her own way knew. She has told more than one Dr., nurse, family member that she knew that something was really wrong with her. People need to learn to listen when a smart , self sufficient, tough kid cries for help.

I probably won't need to update again until next week at which time I should have surgery dates and more info from the Neurosurgeon. Until then I had better get busy beading like crazy and finding more way's to sell my jewelry because no matter how much help we get , this is going to be costly in many other way's So just keep those prayers coming. Love you all very much and we so appreciate all the support we have been getting from you right now.