E-mail from Kristin: January 24th, 2008

I am not sure if I have told all of you but the annoying sinus infection was not a sinus infection at all. The doctor finally had a ct scan done of Taylor's head (on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008)after she began throwing up blood and was more congested than ever. The ct scan showed a mass in Taylor's throat. They sent us right over to the ENT doctor who reviewed the slides and decided that it was probably a tumor. They sent us to Children's Hospital and Taylor was admitted to the oncology floor. It was obviouslyfrightening for all of us and we had the added benefit of having Taylor throwing up eight times- tinged with blood. She is just so lethargic, in EXTREME pain, and not herself at all.

Today was the biopsy. We were scheduled to be picked up at 8am for a 9:00 surgery. It turns out that we were picked up at 2 for a 3:15 surgery. Taylor was not allowed to eat or drink anything but I don't think she would have wanted to anyhow. She was so afraid and cried, kicked, screamed, and told us she was just NOT going to have surgery. It broke our hearts to have to force her to be wheeled into an operating room with neither one of us with her where they performed a biopsy, implanted tubes in each ear to drain all of the fluid that had collected in them (she could hardly hear anything), insert a pick line into her arm, a lumbar punch and a bone marrow test, especially knowing that after it all she wouldn't even feel better.

The last few days had been very hard because they were only allowing her to take tylenol because of the surgery and swelling in her throat. They were afraid that she would stop breathing if they gave her any narcotics because they slow breathing and her throat wasc losing up. She has to wear an oxygen mask all of the time. We also could barely understand her because of the swelling in her throat which really frustrated her. During the biopsy, the surgeon was able to scrape her throat so she is a bit easier to understand. They said it will be two or three days until the results come back. The surgeon says he has a very strong hunch that it is a rhadomyosarcoma but we will not know for sure for a few days. I am told that those tumors respond pretty well to radiation and chemo. The unfortunate thing is that they probably will never be able to operate on this because it is going to be far inbedded in the head and that often leaves a few stray cells wondering through the body.

We are going to be doing a number of scans today to see if there are any other tumors present elsewhere. Feel like I have been there done this before! Hopefully we will be able to start chemo late this week or early next! This child needs some relief!

Thank you so much for all your thoughts and good wishes. Please continue to pray for Taylor, we have a long road ahead of us.