Hello everyone,
My apologies for the long silence. The good, good news is the Joe's cancer continues to be in remission. He had his second set of scans on December 1 and everything is clear. They also bioposied two places in his arm during his graft repair surgery and they, too, looked good.
The other news is that the allograft in Joe's arm has failed. They were able to "straighten" his forearm out during the same surgery, but it has not formed a union at either end. Additionally, the scar tissue from the radiation is extensive and the forecast is that it will not heal.
So Plan B is another operation, this time to perform a "one-bone forearm reconstruction." The idea here is that the allograft will be removed and the distal end (wrist end) of the radius will be fused to the ulna (the non-affected bone). Ideally over time they will grow together to form one stronger bone. This is a fairly rare operation, but success rate is good, approximately 75%. The down side is that Joe will have some loss of function, primarily the rotation of his wrist (suppination and pronation for all you medical-information readers). Joe has already lost most of the rotational motion of his wrist and the surgery will not improve this. His hand is currently very good in terms of fine motor skills. I never thought I could see his GameBoy as a good thing, but I am glad he can play it so proficiently, even if he wants to play it too often!
Once again we are so fortunate to be living in Iowa City with the excellent ortho department at UIHC. Dr. Curt Steyers will be doing the surgery, most likely sometime in January.
Thank you, thank you to everyone who contributed to Joe's Family Fund at the Iowa City Free Medical Clinic (see October 2004 post). The fund currently has almost $3,000 in it. It was most recently used to pay for an eye exam and glasses for one child and for asthma supplies and medication for another.
We are heading up to the Twin Cities this a.m. and are looking forward to it. Joe has not been to Minnesota since Aug. '03 and is excited to be going, artic temperatures notwithstanding.
Many thanks as well for all the continued prayers, healing thoughts and good wishes. They are wonderful and we really appreciate them.
Sending warm thoughts for a lovely holiday season from our family to yours.
Love,
Joe, Seth, Jenny, and Tom