Happy birthday, Kirk!

Hallelujah! Alison's MRI scan shows no progression of the tumors and obvious improvement in the brain swelling. Because of the issue Alison had with her last hospital admission - the lung involvement, which is still unexplained in terms of cause - Dr. Chang wants to hold off on any treatment for now, until her lungs are fully cleared. Her reasoning has to do with Temodar (or any of the chemotherapy agents) having a propensity to cause lung inflammation. So Dr. Chang's recommendation is to have Alison follow up with her planned chest CT scan, make sure that the lungs are healing up, and take a month off any new medications. In fact, she blessed the plan to continue to decrease the decadron (steroids), meaning Alison's immune system has a chance to fully re-charge. Dr. Chang reviewed the MRI (which she now considers the new "baseline", or best MRI yet) with Alison, Kirk, Dani and me, and generally was wonderfully encouraging to Alison to keep up her program to gain her strength back and do "what she wants" over the next month. Then, in a month, a new MRI and another discussion.

Kirk could not have gotten better news on his birthday, so we took the pair out to dinner, joined by Like-A-Daughter (LAD) Jen. Alison looked tired but happy, which she sometimes expresses by crying - you might need a program to know what the underlying emotion is with the crying, but hey - we knew. I'm hoping she had a great, righteous sleep last night!