A bit of good news!

First off- sorry we have not been very good about updating lately, we will try to update more often! Mary's radiation treatments have been going pretty well. The radiation makes her extremely tired and has made her voice a bit raspy. Last week Mary received some extremely good news! They ran some scans to see if the tumor in her lung had shrunk at all, and they found that it has shrunk from the size of a softball to the size of a baseball! Mary was able to take two days off from treatment so the doctors could re-figure the target size of the radiation. Since the tumor is now just the size of a baseball, they did not want to radiate tissue around the tumor that no longer had tumor in it (I hope that makes sense.) We are all so thrilled to have some good news, no one more thrilled than Mary! On the flip side, Mary's hair has started to fall out by the handfuls, which is definitely a big hurtle to jump. The docs and nurses told her that normally people's hair starts to fall out around day 13 or 14 of treatment, but Mary didn't start noticing any of that until day 21. We hope challenging the odds will continue to be a trend for her! Mary has maintained an amazing attitude through all of this, and last week when she found out the tumor had shrunk, she said that everything she has been through seems worth it now!  This week they ran some blood work to see if all of her levels were good enough to do the second round of chemo. She passed with flying colors as all of her labs came back great! Starting this coming Monday (April 4th, Day 29 of treatment) Mary will begin another rigorous week of Chemotherapy. Chemo weeks are definitely the hardest on her. We know that prayers and support from family and friends have been instrumental in getting Mary this far, and ask that you keep those prayers coming as Mary ventures into another difficult week.