Because so many are asking, and we really appreciate everyone's prayers and concerns, I wanted to post a short update on Gideon. However, there isn't a lot of news yet. Because of the difficulty in diagnosis (which the article below does more to explain than I could) and the rarity of it, things have moved quite slowly.
After his surgery in Seattle, the doctors there wanted to ignore the pathology and assume that by removing the spot on his face, he would be okay. However, we were not comfortable with the "ignore the pathology" part - their reasoning was that it is rare for 3 year olds to get melanoma - so the odds were in our favor. But we are talking about OUR 3 year old. And we've been through enough with Elijah to understand that "very rare" doesn't mean "doesn't happen."
We also (Providentially) were able to talk with some very experienced moms who have walked this road before us (two are in the article) and based on their experience, it was definitely necessary to keep going to get a diagnosis we could be confident in. So we were referred to St. Judes Children's Cancer Research Hospital in Memphis.
Due to the long distance between us and them, they want to run as many tests as they can here first before bringing us there. So first they started asking why a CGH hadn't been done. This is a test they do on tissue they already took in both the originally shave biopsy and then the Wide Local Excision surgery. It should tell us exactly where the extra chromosome is - and knowing that will tell us how to proceed (kind of.) So in order to do this, they had to track down the slides, which have traveled from Vancouver to San Francisco to Seattle to Memphis and once found were sent back to Vancouver, where they are currently being tested.
They have also ordered a Sentinel Node Biopsy (which, really, why didn't we do this sooner) which will be done in Portland by the same surgeons who operated on Elijah last year - so thankful to be doing this close to home! That should be sometime in the next two weeks.
They've also ordered a full body scan since Gideon's lymph nodes in his neck continue to be quite enlarged (there are four that you can distinctively feel) and as of ten days ago, the ones in his groin are now also swollen.
Hopefully, all of these results together will give us a clear picture of what is necessary for treatment. I would love it if they all came back clear! But either way, we are thankful in a way that the process was slow, it has given us time to breathe and enjoy the summer and to be reminded that this didn't surprise our God and He chose this (whatever "this" is) for Gideon and for us at this time. And to be reminded that we were called to go on these upcoming missions trips, so we will still go, because we know that God called us and He will provide in EVERY way. So we don't have to fret. We can rest well in His promises.
THE ARTICLE I MENTIONED ABOVE:
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=19774895&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com
