A New Chapter Begins...

Its been a long time since I've been on here with any updates regarding Josie and its basically because there hasn't been updates to give. Her last and only proceedure in 2009 helped to maintain the tumor but didn't take it away so Dave and I decided we wouldn't pursue anything more until she was closer to school age.

Well the kids just turned four and school is steadily creeping up on us. Its been at the back of my mind that we needed to start pursuing options for Josie but wasn't sure what. I always pray for my kids, but a particular one for Josie. I stopped praying for a miracle and started asking God to lead us to the doctor who could take this tumor away. This sounds a little too ironic but soon after I started praying that prayer an answer was given to us.

One night this past June I couldn't sleep so I decided to log on to facebook. We've always been in contact with another family who's child has the same diagnosis as Josie. We've never actually met but have shared emails, the same Iowa doctor, similar proceedure dates, etc. Anyway, through facebook I learned that they were traveling to New York with their little guy for surgery. I instantly teared up; I felt for him, his family and at the same time felt like I wasn't doing enough for Josie. I didn't really sleep that night. I just prayed.

The very next day I heard from the little boys dad, he was calling from New York just to let us know about the doctor that they had found. I was just beside myself. He said things like "eliminate the tumor", "it will never come back", "a lot of experience". He was saying things that I thought we may never hear and that we definatley didn't hear from any doctors we had seen before. Right after that phone call I got online, emailed the doctor and waited for a response. Within 2 days we heard back from the doctor, it was a short email but I remember this line exactly "I do indeed have considerable experience with this", such sweet words to parents who have been told so many times "this is very rare", "we had to look this up", "we have never seen this before", "she'll have to deal with this her whole life". Anyway, fast forwarding ... the doctor requested her MRI's be sent for review (in June) and he's obviously extremely in demand and good at his job because it wasn't until this past week that he was able to have the time to review her scans. We have scheduled our first of what will most likely be several visits to New York for November 1st.

The doctor we are going to see is Dr. Milton Waner, he is a Pediatric Facial Plastic Surgeon with the Vascular Birthmark Institute (VBI). If you'd like to read a little more about the doctor or VBI the website is http://www.vbiny.org/. He sort of looks like Superman through my mom goggles, I think I'll feel star struck when we actually meet in person. I hope he doesn't let me down. Josie is just pumped to finally get to ride in an airplane:)