March 12

Note from Brianna's father Matt:

Hello everyone!
I wanted to send a note out to all of you to give you a little update on the latest with Brianna. Some of you may know that Brianna was experiencing some severe pain and we took her to the hospital. Let me give you a timeline of what occurred.
Monday morning I recieved a call from Bob letting me know that Jen was going to be taking Brianna to the ER at CDH. I got dressed and grabbed all the medical records and the previous MRI scans and headed over to CDH to get her pre-registered in the ER and Jen and Bree showed up shortly after I arrived. The scary part of these pains was that Brianna had said that the pains were nearly as bad as the pains she originally had back in October when she was diagnosed and of course we were concerned that this tumor had gone into a progression stage.
Brianna was given pain meds to help with her pain and was taken in for an MRI about 10:30 Monday morning and by 2 o'clock they had looked at the scan and told us that the tumor is still stable (they were comparing to the previous MRI we did at St. Jude on February 4th). Jennifer and I were very relieved to hear this and we were still trying to figure out where the pains were coming from! Brianna was discharged a little later on and that was the end of that day.
Fast forward to Tuesday evening. I took Gianna with me to watch Kaitlyn's band concert and Brianna was there with Jennifer as well. After the concert I began to drive home and got a call from Jen about 5 minutes later that Brianna was in excruciating pain again and that she was going to take her to Edward ER. I made a bee line for Edward and Maria had to come to Naperville to get Gianna. When we arrived Brianna was in A LOT of pain and I think that shocked Gianna to see Bree in a lot of pain and felt bad for her and even drew Bree a picture to
"make her happy again" as Gianna told me. They gave Bree some morphine for the pain and I contacted Dr. Baker at St. Jude to let him know what was going on. They had recieved my FED EX earlier in the day with Brianna's scan from Monday.
St. Jude wasn't able to view the scan until yesterday morning so we had Brianna admitted for pain management until we could hear from St. Jude about possible reasons for this pain. Jennifer spent the night on those very uncomfortable "beds" for the parents and that did a number on her back and was in pain herself.
Dr. Baker called me Wednesday morning with news that he felt that visually the tumor had shrunk and that he felt that Brianna was otherwise doing really well and that we had to find a reason for the headaches and did hint that it may be due to the cyst-like formation on the edge of the tumor (which we knew about in February). We also know that sometimes fluid leaks in a tumor cyst can be very painful. However we wouldn't be able to definitively know that is the cause until we get the next St. Jude scan on April 8th.
Then I recieved the MRI report and it actually appeared that the tumor had grown a little bit but after talking to the doctors they also reminded us that with her scans at St. Jude she is sedated and immobile. She was awake for this scan last monday so if she moved in the slightest that makes the scan a little tougher to read.
She shows no other neurological symptoms and that is a good thing. At diagnosis she did have some double vision/ blurry vision and some balance issues. She doesn't present those symptoms currently so we are grateful for that.
It appears that Brianna will probably be staying one more evening and possibly get discharged Friday. I know many if you were tuning in to hear about the St. Baldrick's event from last weekend but I am going to let Jennifer update that this weekend for you. I must say though it was a great event and Brianna had a great time!
Thanks to our spouses for handling things on the homefront! We couldn't do it without you!
As you continue to pray for Brianna please also keep Max, Kole, Andrew, Caleb and all the kids fighting this monster in your thoughts and prayers!
We can't thank you all enough!
Matt