March 14, 2019

It has been a while since our last update. The truth is I didn’t know what the update was myself. It has been very upsetting to watch Josephine losing functions like hearing and speech now without knowing why. The MRI images were interpreted differently by our local oncologist and the doctors in Monterrey. Here we were told tumor progression and Monterrey told us the problem is the white matter, possible Leukoencephalopathy, which is a byproduct of last year radiation. Josephine received her treatment in Monterrey on March 1st.
Given the discrepancy of opinions I made two appointments with different specialist in New York City. The first one at Mount Sinai agreed with the Monterrey doctors in the assessment. The second appointment was at Memorial Sloan and the doctor there also agreed with the doctors in Monterrey. However, they are going to repeat an MRI there next week in a way that will enable them to clearly discern between tumor activity and white matter or inflammation. The symptoms are contradictory but for the most part the tumors are stable. Bottom line when it comes to the brain, the treatments can be as problematic as the tumors themselves.
We miss Josephine’s voice, she misses our noises and so many things. I wanted to share this thank you video she made last year when she was hospitalized in September 2018. There is also a pic from our 3/19 trip to Monterrey. My older son Jonathan helped us on this trip. Josephine is unable to say thank you right now, but we are hoping and working toward recovery. Thanks for your support and prayers.