Oh. My. Gosh.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, we finally got a call from Dr. Carr this morning.  The team in PA recommended surgery and possibly using photodynamic therapy.  I had studied up on this and was familiar with it.  Basically the patient receives a medicine the day before surgery.  Cancer cells have a very high uptake of the medicine.  Then during surgery they shine a red light on the lung and that activates the medicine inside the cancer cell and it causes cell death.  It has not been proven to work in all cases, mostly because sarcoma is so rare that they don't get a lot of chance to try it.  But they are having very good success with it in the mesothelioma patients.  For about six weeks post surgery Trent would be VERY sensitive to light.  An incandescent light bulb would give him a burn. 

There is one small glitch though.  Trent has a very, very small pleural effusion (fluid on the lung) that needs to be tested before we can move forward.  If there is cancer in that fluid then his cancer is incurable.  The surgery would be of no benefit and would only expose Trent to the risks associated with surgery.  So we are heading down today to do pre-op and tomorrow Trent will have a camera put in his lung to take pictures and remove a small amount of the fluid to have it tested.  He will be in the hospital until Saturday. 

In the meantime, we begin the process of getting clearance for Dr. Freidburg to do surgery at the Huntsman.  Yep, that's right!  He has offered to come here to do the surgery because of the difficulty for us of doing the surgery in PA.  We could bring Trent home after 7-10 days in the hospital and we would have our support system nearby.  They all felt like that would be best for Trent and Dr. Freidburg said he would clear his schedule to come to Utah.  I did NOT expect that to happen!  Hopefully by next Wednesday we would have results from tomorrow's procedure and a decision from the administration regarding the "visiting professor".  Then surgery would follow as soon as possible.

We are nervous about how much time this is all taking but would rather know all the ins and outs before Trent has surgery.  We feel like this is a smart move and are focused on a good outcome.  We will be fasting and praying that there is no cancer in that little bit of fluid!  Just one more little, medium, HUGE obstacle to hurdle before the BIG DADDY SURGERY!