Well it's a few days later than planned, but here is an update on Eric's hip:

After five hours of surgery Eric's surgeon told us that what we had thought was likely bone death was in fact a recurrence of the giant cell tumor.  Just like last time he removed the tumor, used adjuvants such as liquid nitrogen to kill any remaining cells, and then filled the affected area with bone cement.  The remainder of the bone that he dug the original bone cement from was filled with bone graft.  A funny little side note:  Eric hates what he refers to as "dead people stuff."  This means that if you die, he doesn't want you to leave anything to him.  Well it turns out the bone graft that was used in his femur was from a cadaver.  Oh, the irony!  :)

It took longer than expected for Eric to come out of recovery because they were having trouble managing his pain.  Finally, 10 hours after arriving at the hospital, Eric was admitted to a room.  He was in good spirits and requested Whataburger for dinner.  That was a bad idea. . . anesthesia=nausea=vomit.

We ended up spending two nights in the hospital.  Maddie came up to visit Eric a couple of times and found all kinds of buttons that she desperately wanted to push.

Since being home Eric has done really well for the most part.  He's doing his best to help out with chores and Maddie, despite being on crutches and not being allowed to put weight on his right leg.  Eric will remain on crutches and off of his right leg for two months.  After that he'll spend about one month on one crutch as he adjusts to bearing weight on his leg.  This means that he should finally be able to bear weight without crutches around the time Baby Boy arrives.

So what will Eric's future be like in regard to his hip?  We don't really know.  His surgeon, who is also his doctor, believes that at some point Eric will need a hip replacement.  He said it could happen as soon as six months from now, it could be in 30 years, or Eric may prove him wrong and never need one.  Eric will continue to go for yearly follow-ups for at least the next 10 years to monitor for anymore recurrence of the tumor, as well as to simply see how his hip is holding up.

Thank you for your prayers about Eric's surgery and recovery.  Please continue to pray for his recovery as he returns to school next week.  Oh, and say a prayer for me too if you think about it.  I am officially in my third trimester (yay!), but instead of being able to take things a little easier I'm going to be working a little harder to keep up with Maddie, the house, work, and Eric's needs.  We have plenty of family and friends around to help out, I just need to remember to ask for help.

Tomorrow morning Eric is scheduled for hip surgery.  You can look at this post to see what got us to this point.  Eric seems pretty indifferent about the whole thing.  I'm thinking he doesn't remember the pain involved with his first surgery.  I, on the other hand, am terribly anxious.  Please pray that the surgeon is able to remove the metal and cement successfully.  I think that's really the biggest concern, other than the small chance that what we believe to be bone death is not that at all.

Another seemingly silly thing that I'm anxious about is that while I'm in the waiting room, Maddie will be on the road to Austin with my mom to pick up Rachel from the airport.  Maddie has never traveled out of town without me and I'm sure she'll be fine, but I know I'll be nervous.

Assuming all goes as planned with the surgery, we should be settled back at home by Saturday and I'll update on how everything went at that point.  In the meantime, I sure hope I can manage to find a comfortable way to sleep on a hospital couch for two nights!

A little over two years ago we found out that Eric had a giant cell tumor in the head of his femur.  A surgery was quickly scheduled to have the tumor removed.  Eric recovered quickly, has been relatively pain free, and seems to be pretty proud of the metal collection he has in his hip.

A couple of months ago at his two year follow-up his doctor noticed that something was once again happening at the same location in his femur.  The concern was that either the giant cell tumor had returned or some of the bone had died.  Yesterday Eric had another round of x-rays done to see if there had been any growth.  They showed no change.  If it had been a giant cell tumor, the doctor would have expected to see growth.  Dr. W still hasn't completely ruled out the tumor as a possibility, but he is definitely thinking it looks more like bone death.

Something to know about bone death is that after the initial insult that causes the death, the area remains static.  Therefore there is no anticipation that this area in his femur will grow.  Sounds good, right?  BUT, the bone tissue in the damaged spot will continue to soften.  It could likely soften to the point that the head of Eric's femur collapses.  If this happens he will have to have a hip replacement which would put a limit on him physically for the rest of his life.  Plus, hip replacements don't last forever.

So Eric has a couple of options: 

1. He can continue to have the area monitored by x-rays every few months.  I believe this is mainly to watch for growth, indicating that it is the tumor and not bone death.  If at any point he experiences pain in his hip he would need to go in to see if the head has collapsed.  There is no guarantee that it will collapse, but there is not guarantee that it won't.
2. He can opt for surgery now in an effort to prevent a collapse and save his hip.  It would require removal of some of the metal and all of the bone cement that is in there from the last surgery.  You can imagine how difficult it would be to remove cement and evidently it's trickier in the top of the femur (as opposed to around the knee joint) since the area to work in is narrower.  If something does not go as planned during the surgery, Eric would be sewn up, given the opportunity to recover, and then talks would begin about a hip replacement.

As of now surgery seems like the best option.  It beats living in fear that the head could collapse.  The biggest issue for me with the surgery is that it is not routine.  You have to understand that Eric is literally "one in a million" for simply having had a giant cell tumor.  Then he's even more unique for having had it in the upper part of his femur.  It usually occurs around knee joints.  His doctor is amazing, but admits that he has concerns about the difficulty of removing the cement in this next surgery.  He says if Eric opts for surgery he will do everything he can to save his hip.

Please pray for us as we make the decision whether or not to go ahead with the surgery.  Eric's doctor is giving us all of the information he has and leaving the ultimate decision up to us.

The Results Are In

The pathologist called yesterday and said Eric's tumor was just what the surgeon suspected--a BENIGN giant cell tumor.  Yay!  Now we can just focus on his recovery.  Thanks for the prayers, calls, cards, visits and food!  We've been blessed with some fabulous friends and family.

There's No Place Like Home

Eric will be discharged from the hospital this afternoon.  Yay!  We're both going a little stir crazy sitting here in his room.

We reported to the hospital at 5:30 on Friday morning.  Despite it being so early, Eric had quite a crowd to see him off--wife :), parents, sister, mother-in-law, grandparents, friend, and pastor.  Of course Eric had to keep us entertained while we waited for him to be taken to surgery.

Finally at 7:30 the anesthesiologists took Eric to the OR.  Three hours later our family was called to the consultation room to meet with the surgeon.  He told us that he felt really good about the operation.  Based on what he saw when he removed the tumor, he's 98% sure it's benign.  The surgeon ended up using bone cement to fill the hole that the tumor left behind and he used a couple of screws and a plate to help support Eric's femur.  Because things went so well, he is anticipating that Eric will only be on crutches for two weeks, instead of the previously anticipated six.  Another yay!

The recovery from the surgery has been rough.  I don't think Eric realized this was going to be major surgery with intense pain that he's going to have to work through.  Yesterday afternoon he decided to start weaning himself off of the morphine since he won't be able to take that home.  The doctor prescribed a strong oral pain killer that Eric LOVES.  He says it makes him feel good, but it drives me nuts! The medicine makes Eric itchy and a little loopy.  From 5-9 this morning he was humming away.  I asked him what he was doing and he said he was singing to himself.  I didn't recognize the song, so apparently it is one that the pain killer made up for him.  The nurse decided we'll cut his dosage in half to see if that will keep him sane and still manage the pain.

Throughout this whole process our 21 week old baby girl has been dancing around in my belly like crazy!  It is so strange to not only feel her, but to be able to see her moving around.  Eric's been too drugged up to care, but I can't wait until he gets a little more rested so he can watch her too!  :)

Probably, Maybe, Possibly, Depends

We heard those words a lot today at Eric's appointment with the tumor specialist, who happens to be the surgeon as well. Here's what we do know for sure:

Eric's CT scan came back negative meaning that the tumor hasn't spread elsewhere. The surgeon has decided that since the tumor will need to come out no matter what, he'll skip the biopsy and go straight to surgery. During surgery he'll remove all of the tumor and send some of it to pathology so they can determine exactly what kind of tumor it is. The surgeon will also install a screw and plate to provide structural support for Eric's pelvic bone as he recovers from the surgery. One of Eric's first comments after the appointment was, "Now I'll set off metal detectors!"

The surgery will be done first thing Friday morning and will last about two hours. Eric will stay overnight and should be released on Saturday afternoon. He'll be out of work for about a week and on crutches for six weeks. He is NOT happy about that. About a week after surgery we should get a response from pathology and then we'll go from there. Dr. W still thinks the tumor is most likely benign since it has distinct borders and Eric seems to be in good health otherwise.

I'll probably update again sometime this weekend and you can always check Eric's blog for his view on this and other things. Thanks for the prayers, and keep them coming!

Not a DC Post. . .

more important things have come up.

Eric has been having hip pain for the past several months and we just assumed it was from when he twisted his leg the wrong way while playing basketball. Since the pain hasn't let up, my aunt got Eric and appointment with her boss, an orthopedic doctor. He ordered an x-ray and an MRI and it was discovered that Eric has a very large tumor on the head of his femur where it meets his pelvic bone. Based simply on what can be seen from the MRI, the doctors think it is a giant cell tumor. The good news is that would mean that the tumor is benign, the bad news is that it is fast growing and would require surgery as soon as possible.

Eric will hopefully have a CT scan sometime this week to see if this tumor has spread to any other part of his body. He'll also be meeting with a tumor specialist to discuss biopsy options. For now he is hobbling around on crutches because he has been told to keep weight off of that leg and he's obviously not being allowed to participate in softball this season. Please keep him in your prayers. It feels like we're getting hit by several things all at once and it's kind of overwhelming.