Arrival

Tuesday Iva, Antonio, and Mimi all arrived in Houston. Zoran and I waited anxiously and 2 hours after their plan landed, we caught our first glimpse of them. Ahhh, joy!




Zoran shaved his head in support of Iva. He has had such little hair these days, I didn't notice straight away.

Finally, we brought our Iva home.




Wednesday we spent the entire day and evening at MD Anderson. We met with Dr. Ludwig.
Iva had blood work and scans of her pelvis and chest. Dr. Ludwig told us that if she has metastasis (growth of the cancer in other places), then her chance of survival is 5%. 5%! We were all shocked. We knew it wasn't good, these spots she might have, but 5%? He said they would try to discuss her case at the sarcoma board today (Thursday) and he would call us after at around 5. (Again with the 5s!) So all day we are trying not to despair. I did a terrible job of it. I was a mess today, really. Luckily, I was at work. But Iva, she was the bravest of us all. It was as if she didn't hear, or more perhaps, that she didn't believe, I don't know which. He had given us his cell number in case we didn't hear from him by 5:30, we were to call him. So it was decided that it was my job to call him. He explains they didn't get to discuss her case today, they had too many cases. But he reviews her scans with me on the phone and says her pelvis looks much better than he expected it to. What does that mean? Well with the pre-surgical scans from February, which showed such a large tumor he was expecting much worse. She may or may not have some residual disease in the pelvis. He wasn't sure if it was just surgical changes (the radiologist hadn't read the films yet). But the other news was that these spots they told her she had in Vienna after her last scan there earlier this month were gone except for the one on the right lung that has been there all along (at least since February). He said it has grown to 1 cm in size, about double of what it was in February. He called it a growth. So in the end we decided it was good news. And now she sleeps.

We love you dear, sweet Iva!