More on Autumn...

Autumn and her family are still at Vanderbilt. On tuesday they did a spinal tap to check her cerebrospinal fluid. That was negative, which I understood to mean that the cancer is not metasticizing...so that's good. Thursday they did a biopsy of the tumor. That surgery was 4 hours long, but they feel they got a really good sample of the tumor to send to the lab. They know that the tumor is on her hypothalamus (not pituitary like they originally thought), and that it is vascularized (which usually means cancer). No word yet on the biopsy results, but they have scheduled her surgery for feb. 26 at Vanderbilt. She is doing so well since her shunt placement last week that they are sending her home tomorrow (saturday) until the day before her surgery. The doctors think that the tumor has been growing since birth, so they don't anticipate it will grow enough over the next 10 days to cause any more problems since the shunt is in place to drain off any excess fluid (which was what was causing all of her symptoms to begin with). They still are anticipating a good prognosis long-term for her, so pray this continues to be the case after the biopsy results are in. Thank you to everybody for your prayers! Sonya and Ryan have just been overwhelmed with support, and anybody who has been through something similar knows just how important that is!