Update on our friends' son

From my e-mail in-box:

"His vision test on Friday was very long, but showed no vision problems. Which is good, especially since he only has hearing in one ear.

The neurologist got back to us yesterday. He showed the MRI to 4 of the best radiologists. They still aren't sure what it is. It looks to be benign, and appears to be a tumor, as in something that will grow. He said optic nerve glioma is the most likely. He said it would need to grow 50% to affect vision and it would result in a narrowing of the visual field.

He gave us the choice of operating right away versus checking again in 6 months. He said that if we do the surgery there is a 90% chance he will come out with no impact on vision, but there is a 10%, or as he said "very rare only seen once in 30 years" chance that it could be the type of tumor that has grown into the optic chiasm in such a way that Avery would have vision loss as a result of removing it.

He seemed to lean towards immediate surgery (he is a neurosurgeon!) based on the fact that he felt it would grow and cause problems and the smaller it is the easier the surgery and off course you want to take it out before you have problems. But he was giving us the option to watch and see and perhaps it won't grow or grow very slowly and we could put off surgery, or avoid it entirely. Signing your kid up for brain surgery is no easy thing.

So not a fun decision to make, please pray that we make the best choice and especially that Avery will come through this with no vision loss.

And the Dr did say that this is not related to his hearing loss, we just happened to catch it while investigating his ears. Isn't that funny? In a "the world is a crazy place and why do we even pretend we are in control" sort of way?

Thanks so much for prayers!"

Keep up the prayers. Funny how, at the start of Lent when many of us are praying and offering alms and mortifications how God sometimes places squarely before us something truly worthy...