Sunday Evening

Our day went well today after a rough night worrying about Matt. This morning we went up to see Matt in the ICU at about 11:30 because they were taking him to his Cardiac MRI during visiting hours. As we were leaving, Jim Holland's mystery friend, Sister Edna, showed up. She is a very sweet lady and we brought her back to pray with Matt. It was very nice to see someone not associated with the hospital. She already feels like a friend even though we just met her!

We couldn't spend much time with Sister Edna because our good friends and former neighbors, Ray and Kate Lynch were coming down from Delaware to visit us and Matt. We chatted a while and then they took us to a nice lunch at a restaurant down at the Inner Harbor area here in Baltimore. We had a great time visiting with them and catching up with old times. Their visit was a great blessing to us and did a lot to get our minds off of our troubles. After lunch, we all went back and visited with Matt for a while. We kept teasing him about putting a Baltimore Ravens cap on him.

Earlier in the day we had a talk with Dr. McArthur about Matt's case. He is a great doctor and took a long time telling us what needs to happen and explaining the benefits of installing a tracheostomy (Noel was really worried about this but is not so worried now). This would keep them from having the intibate Matt every time he needed a procedure.

Matt's cardiac MRI was done today and the results were good enough for his surgery tomorrow (not perfect - he still has some sort of irregularity in his heart beat).

So the game plan is still rolling:

1. MRIs are done
2. Tomorrow, (Yes, it's Labor Day) they will do a surgery to either biopsy the tumor on his lower spine or remove all or part of it, depending on what the surgeon sees when he goes in there.
3. Possibly, he will have the tracheostomy done Tuesday or Wednesday.
4. The doctors think that there is some relation between the tumor in the lower back and the stuff they see in the base of his brain so we may have a treatment strategy a couple of days after the biopsy. What they see at the base of his brain in the MRI is causing the pressure on his cranial nerves.

One cool non-medical thing that happened:

Matt's Uncle Chuck is using Matt's Trailblazer for a little while until they get a new car. While cleaning out the Trailblazer, Chuck found Matt's long lost Senior Class ring. Matt was very excited to hear this.

Good night. I think we'll sleep a lot better tonight.