The Memphis Blues

From the back cover of the Country Cares brochure.

Put on our blue suede shoes
And we boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
W.C. Handy – won’t you look down over me
Cause we got a first class ticket
And we're as blue as we can be
Marc Cohn, Walking In Memphis

It's that time again. Our bags are packed and we're as ready to go as we're going to be. Our plane leaves at 9:35 am and currently it's raining in the land of the Delta Blues.

Steven and Jake at St. Jude in April

We're looking forward to seeing Steven's friend Jake there, he's scheduled to be there for the same three days that we'll be there. Jake had a similar type of tumor and was diagnosed within a week of Steven, they went through the exact same treatment protocol.

On Monday, we have a marathon appointment schedule that begins at 7:45 am with a bone density scan and concludes at 8:00 pm with his spinal MRI.

The bone density and DEXA scans are to evaluate him for osteoporosis, a possible side effect of radiation to the spine.

Then a bunch of endocrine stuff, as it is not uncommon that children who have thyroid / growth / endocrine problems after having their heads and pituitary glands irradiated.

The main event, the MRI of the brain, is on Tuesday. His lumbar puncture is on Wednesday.

In order to minimize the IV anxiety, we'll put his IV in on Monday afternoon before the MRI and hopefully it'll be a good one so we can leave it in until after his lumbar puncture on Wednesday.

Our schedule is here, we'll be back Thursday afternoon.

Hold a good thought for us, keep us in your prayers as we prepare to take a look inside his head. And you can be sure we'll be double checking for stray magnetic objects in the MRI suite :-).

- Kathleen

p.s.	For those of you in San Diego, our local country music station, KSON 97.3 and 92.1 FM, is having a radiothon on Thursday and Friday to benefit St. Jude.
	Steven and I (along with many of our St. Jude friends) were interviewed for the Country Cares radiothon and excerpts from our interviews will be played during the radiothon.