July 6th, 2011: Cancer Free

The final scans looked perfect!

Julia had a CT scan first. That took the longest and she needed her port accessed in order to shoot some contrast through her blood. Next up was an EKG and an echocardiogram (aka heart ultrasound) which were pretty simple and painless procedures.

Finn ignored the procedure and watched TV instead.

After we got the scan results, the clinic folks brought in a balloon and trophy for Julia and even a medal for Finn. Then they sang "Happy day" (It's like Happy Birthday but without the "birth") and we all cheered.

We snapped a picture of Julia with her oncologist, Dr. Chu, cancer killer extraordinaire.

You would think we could relax a bit with that news. While we obviously breathed a helluva sigh of relief, we've got a bit more to do. Next week Monday Julia goes to get blood counts one last time and a long physical therapy appointment follow-up to see what her ongoing PT future will look like. Assuming blood counts are fine, on Wednesday she'll have surgery to remove the chest port and replace the g-tube in her stomach with a the smaller, simpler "button". The button will still allow us access to her stomach (we still have a few meds...) but without the tube hanging around and a very noninvasive removal when the time comes.

We've been tentatively planning a party and so now we're going to have to go all out to get it planned. There will be a forthcoming blog update with all the details (hopefully tomorrow), but this is what we know so far:
Saturday, July 23rd at Glen Park in River Falls, WI from mid-morning until late afternoon.