Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom
and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!

"Who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?"

"Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?"

For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Romans 11:33-36

We traveled to Iowa City again on the 30th.  I was scheduled for a modified barium swallow test and esophagram along with an evaluation by an Otolaryngologist (head and neck doctor).  The swallow test involved taking different consistencies of barium - a white substance which ranged from water consistency to peanut butter consistency.  They took a series of x-rays as they watched me swallow.  I somehow gulped it all down...and passed with flying colors!  They did not see anything of concern with my swallow.

I guess to back things up a bit...the reason for concern with my swallow is because of the pressure I've been experiencing in my neck.  The MRI a few weeks ago ruled out additional tumors or spreading of the tumor.  However, the brain tumor, if it would continue to grow could eventually affect my swallowing, leaving me unable to swallow (yes, that's a hard sentence to...umm "swallow").  So they just wanted to make sure the tumor wasn't bothering these particular nerves.  We were obviously excited that this wasn't the case. 

After these tests I headed to the head and neck doctor.  They decided they wanted to run another test on me...not sure what it was called, but this is what it involved...they took a small skinny cord (about the thickness of most phone chargers).  At the end of it was a tiny camera.  And they snaked it through my nose.  There was a tv screen right in front of me so I could watch.  I couldn't really watch but apparently they fished it so far up and around that they were able to see my tongue.  They had me move my tongue around...and again found nothing at all to be concerned about! 

So...the doctor said "Good news, nothing's wrong with your swallowing.  Bad news, we don't know what's causing the issues with your neck."  Ever since treatment, I've seen improvements in my facial weakness and my hearing and vision have also improved.  Nothing's back to normal...but it has gotten better.  We asked the doctor if this could all be related to the nerves trying to work again.  He said it could be the nerves trying to send messages, but just mis-firing.  Because we now know that the tumor is smaller, there are no tumors on my spinal cord, nothing's wrong with my swallow, we are just not going to worry about this.  We'll keep an eye on it if it gets worse or changes, but we're just going to hope for now that it's just the nerves trying to figure out how to work again.

Thank you so much for praying.  We are thankful for all the good news we've had recently and are ready to enjoy summer.  God bless!