Lori celebrated her .... yikes.... 40th birthday yesterday!  Nice relaxing night with dinner in and yummy cupcakes!

Then on to a busy weekend and week ahead.  James and JJ are heading up north for a Cub Scout campout.  The girls will be having a girls weekend with some friends.  Madison and her friend have been working very hard on a fund raising carnival for ALS and Breast Cancer.  They've been organizing jumpers, games, food, etc...  Quite a tiring undertaking for two 11 year olds, but they've been doing great!  Madison has a choir concert, carnival, and then on to a good friend's wedding. Busy, but a good busy!

Not a whole lot more to update on the medical end.  Still waiting patiently for follow up x-rays on Lori's leg (October 9) where we'll find out if the stimulator worked.  Last chemo next week (Oct. 4) - yeah!  Then no cancer doctors for 3 months - woohoo!  What will Lori do with her extra time??? 



Madison joined me for my Chemo appt and helped celebrate
my birthday with cake at the clinic.



Hopeful...

A gentleman came on Friday and fitted Lori's house arrest anklet....uh...bone stimulator.  Ha!  It is a little embarrassing because it does seem to look like a house arrest anklet, so luckily it needs to only be worn 3 hours per day on each site so no going out in public like that!

 

The good news is that the bone stimulator needs to be worn 3 hours a day, however more does not hurt, so we're going on 9-12+ hours a day.  Let's hope for the best!  The medical representative that fitted the device said that they have proven to see a 80-85% success rate.

Physical Therapy has now stopped/been put on hold until further notice.  Nothing changes other than the slight weight Lori can bear on it and stretching, so we're in a wait pattern until Oct. 16 when the x-rays and doctor visit take place.  In the meantime, Lori has been busying herself with scrapbooking to pass the time -  having fun and miraculously catching up (well...kind of). 

Bummer News

Unfortunately we received some bummer news yesterday.  Lori went to the orthopedic doctor for xrays and check up.  Although the muscle and skin graft are doing quite well, the bones do not seem to be healing on their own.  The two breaks are still quite clear, so the doctor is starting a bone stimulator which will be worn on Lori's lower leg, and will hopefully trigger the body to begin repairing the bone again.  It is unknown what has caused this.  The doctor commented that with this severe of a break it could be the lack of blood flow to that area, or the fact that Lori's body was giving all efforts to the muscle and skin and the bone basically got the back seat, simply the chemo could have played a factor or all of the above.  No matter the reason, we are hopeful that the stimulator will work (works about 50-60% of the time).  After 6 weeks time of the stimulator, the doctor will redo xrays to determine the next step.  If the bone does not repair, a bone graft will be required.  This involves another surgery (ugh!) to remove bone from Lori's hip, and lifting the muscle and skin graft to graft the bone underneath (ick!).  We are hoping and praying this won't be necessary, but nonetheless it's still 6 more weeks of waiting and patience! 

Here's the xray from yesterday where you can see the two breaks - one very obvious about midway up and the other is just above the horizontal metal plate.  Notice the resemblance to ... say The Terminator???