[Readers' advisory:  This posting is completely medical/technical updates.]

Brain cancer is...

 ...for the coming days, more work than we thought.

Don't worry!  It's good work, just work.  Darrell saw Dr. Park this morning, and it made us glad again to have a large team working on his case.  He saw what Dr. Cloughesy saw in the recent scan, but Dr. Park would like to see another scan after a month--not after two months as desired by Dr. Cloughesy. 

Although holding still for MRI takes some super hero effort from Big D, seeing what's going on in his head (ha!) brings peace of mind that will make it worth it.  Thus, Darrell will have a scan at the end of May and one at the end of June.  It may be that the doctors then go with the once-every-two-months plan.

Today we took a picture of the scan as we talked with Dr. Park.  You can see the thicker rim that we mentioned yesterday:

The dark center is a cavity where the tumor was.  Dr. Park says it won't fill back in with normal tissue.   It'll stay a cavity.  We thought you might like to compare the post-treatment scan (above) with the pre-surgical scan (below), posted long ago:

Take that, Bad Guy! Zap!  Pow!

In other cancer news:

• Darrell's blood counts are all normal, measured today.  He'll do the double-dose chemo next week (M-F--those are Days 1-5 of "the cycle"), and then they'll check his blood counts again on Day 21.  
• We just got off the phone with Optune (the hat people).  Insurance is 100% approved, meaning no partial payments for us, and things are now moving into action.  We've got a patient coordinator, and the beginning of Hat Days should pretty closely coincide with the Day 1 of chemo.
• 10:43 update:  Just got off the phone with UCLA to begin the request to have Darrell's tumor tissue tested by a different genetics company:  Foundation One.  That's Dr. Cloughesy's preference, as it offers a more comprehensive analysis than did Caris or the Mayo Clinic. 

All that and it's not yet 11:00 a.m.!  Warm wishes for health and happiness today.