The Murphy Family

It has been forever since I posted.  When life feels normal I forget to post.  There really isn't anything new to report, which, in this case, is wonderful!! Logan has healed up great from surgery.  The vein that they did a resection on isn't filling very well which would indicate that there may be a clot or something in there but they aren't worried about it at this point.  So....I guess I won't worry about it then?  I try to just follow the feelings of the docs and if they say they aren't worried, I don't worry. He has been having great energy lately and is even getting some hair back because of our few week break from chemo.  It will start falling out again because we still have 3 rounds of chemo left, but it was good to see that it did, in fact, come back ;).  His last round of in patient chemo is in 3 weeks and we are REALLY excited for that.  Logan really enjoys his stays there but when it's time to go home he is always really grateful to go...

Dan and I went with Logan to get chemo last week, not knowing that the doc would have a pathology report from everything they took out during the surgery. They took the kidney and a bunch of lymph nodes that were near the affected area. The kidney/tumor (really no kidney was left, just all tumor) was 95 percent dead, which is fantastic. Also, there was no trace of cancer anywhere in any of the lymph nodes. We don't know if that means the cancer never went there or if the chemo killed it, but we don't really care. As of the surgery Logan has no detectable cancer in his body! Yay!  We were thrilled. That appt. could have been really bad. We had no idea we would be finding that out and I'm just so grateful it was good news. The docs have all said this is the absolute best case that this could have been. The surgeon today said he did not expect the lymph nodes to be cancer free and that he was so thrilled. The more we go along, the more we see how naive (by choice) we have been...

We had two consults last week. One for radiation and one for surgery. We didn't love them. The radiation one just gave us a rundown of how that will go and some of the side effects. Most of them uncommon, but a few, more than likely. He will probably not develop to his full height because of the radiation to the spine. That made me sad, but Logan said he has always wanted to be short. So, I got over that pretty fast 😂. He will be the only 7 year I know with tats. He gets a few permanent dots tattooed on his abdomen. He will have a mold made especially for him to lie in and then they line up the machine and fire away. He will have a treatment each day for 11 days. Some for his lung, some for his flank area (kidney, lymph nodes, liver, and surrounding area, then some additional for his liver. They don't think it was affected but have to be safe. The radiation also increases his risk for hardening of the arteries later in life and also cancer. But, a healthy lifestyle can really ...

So, we did a few weeks of out-patient chemo in between our in-patient chemos.  Then, on, Thursday, July 13th we started another 5 day in-patient run.  We changed our chemo day to Thursdays so that we can do our in-patient from Thursday-Monday instead of Monday-Friday.  We feel very lucky that Dan has as much vacation as he does.  One year at work his vacation got bumped up instead of traditional raise and that has been one of our greatest blessings in this whole deal.  Vacation days disappear really fast when you are in the hospital for a week at a time.  So, now Dan only has to take 3 days off instead of 5, which makes a big difference.  But, it also means we don't get weekends to rest up from the week in the hospital, but we decided the vacation days are worth it.  So, everything went according to plan.  Dan stayed the first 3 days and I finished it off the last night.  I really prefer to be home so I can keep our home running like I n...

   We went in last Monday for scans and to start the first in-patient chemo.  We started early at 7:30 am on Monday and Dan and Logan got home Friday evening.  It was a long week but it definitely went better than we could have hoped.       The results from Logan's scans were better than we could have hoped for.  I have been praying so hard that his scans would be really good, not just okay, and just felt a lot of confidence that they would be...and they were.  So many others are praying for the same thing that there is just so much power going on here.  I cannot deny the feelings I have felt.  This experience has increased my faith in the power of prayer, fasting, and just the way God's power works.  "Experiment upon the word" has a much more real power and meaning to me.  I have always believed that prayer works because I have had lots of experiences with it, but this situation has taken it to a whole new level.  ...

     Well, Rounds 5 and 6 went great.  There was very little nausea with round 5, which are the drugs that make him sick.  His body did awesome.  No fevers! Hallelujah!  The doc actually told me last week to stop taking his temp because if I know he has one I have to take him in ;).  He told me to only take it if Logan appears to be really sick, so we didn't take any temps, but he really never even felt warm so we feel lucky these last few weeks.  Round 6 was yesterday and we didn't realize it, but we are starting inpatient chemo next week right after his scans.  Dan and I both thought we had another round of out patient chemo if the scans show that they can't do surgery (which is still what the doc expects). So, we were surprised and Logan was overwhelmed again and we had to take deep breaths and calm down.  We are really trying to take it a day at a time which means I don't google stuff or try to plan for the next treatment. ...