The Beginning of Hope's Fight

(Hope 11 days after surgery)

Hi All!
 Thank you for taking the time to check out Hope's Blog.


As many of you know on Friday 7-8-2011 Hope was rushed to Legacy Emanuel Children's Hospital in Portland by ambulance from the Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Salmon Creek where the ER had discovered a large mass on Hope's brain. Hope had been feeling kind of sick for about a month leading up to this, throwing up, headaches, losing weight and had even made a few visits already to the Urgent Care. At one point they thought she just had the flu and was dehydrated. About a week before the ambulance ride Hope was playing in the neighborhood pool when a couple of middle school boys jumped in and landed on the back of her neck. So my mom took her to the Urgent Care again where they thought she maybe had a minor concussion. As the week went by she just wasn't recovering from what was thought to be a concussion, she wanted to sleep all day, she threw up once a day and had a serious headache. On Friday morning Hope once again woke up with a painful headache and was throwing up, so my mom again took her back to the Urgent Care. It was there that Hope began screaming in pain because her head hurt so bad, the Urgent Care told my mom to take her to the Emergency Room. My mom took her to the Salmon Creek Legacy Hospital ER and Hope herself actually begged for a CAT Scan. After the results of the CAT Scan they felt it was urgent to rush her to the Children's Hospital in Portland where Dr. Monica Wehby performed an emergency surgery to put a tube in Hope's head to drain the spinal fluid to reduce the swelling around Hope's brain. Waiting at the hospital was one of the hardest parts, not knowing what was going on, not even really knowing exactly what they had found. After the surgery Hope was so sweet, saying to everyone "Thank you so much everyone for supporting me" I think she just felt a lot better, she was so grateful.
After that surgery we were faced with the results of the MRI. The MRI revealed there was a tumor the size of an egg behind her pituitary gland on her brain. The surgeon knew just by where it was, that it was malignant and surgery to remove it was needed right away. On the following Tuesday major brain surgery went underway. We were told that the surgery was going to be really complicated, the tumor hard to get to, and was going to take all day. With 100's of people praying, the surgery went really well and only took 3 hours. Her recovery was remarkable. She was talking and moving and breathing on her own practically right away. She did spend a couple weeks total in the ICU, but it was only a short while after surgery she was discharged and free to go home.
Dr. Wehby was amazing, she even did the surgery in a way that they didn't have to shave Hope's hair. At this point we were under the impression that she got most of it and there was only a small possibility of radiation. We were simply waiting on the results of the biopsy of the tumor and Hope was home, trying to get back to enjoying her summer.