Part 4- Owen spent 12 days in the hospital and had another surgery to insert a shunt, we considered it minor, pretty amazing how perspective can change in just a few days. Six months earlier we had fretted about wisdom tooth pulling! Once we arrived home he spent a week at home and was back to school with no complaints, I would have dragged it out! It was determined the treatment would be 15 months of monthly chemotherapy. His Chemo required about 4 hours on an IV followed by a few days of nausea it also required blood tests every Friday morning. Prior to the diagnosis I would have told you Owen would have really struggled with a situation such as this, little did I know how strong he would be. He was and has always been the coolest of us all through this journey. He Loves Life is Good Tshirts and made a point to wear them from the beginning to let people no it's alright. When something like this happens you are faced with a choice that you will Trust God or you will not, in between isn't possible if you want to keep your sanity. It's another one of the gifts of the diagnosis and Owen lead the way! After 3 months of Chemo there was not any impact on the growth and his tumor team decided he should stop chemo immediately and discuss other options. Time to trust God..... but it's scary! Chemo is basically a poison to the body so you do not want to administer if it's not working well. The next step would be radiation.....

Part 3 ( January 2016) Owen spent the next couple nights in the ICU recovering, brain surgery delivers quite a shock to the system and we developed a whole new respect and Love for those that work in that area. After the ICU Owen's oncologist Dr. Klesse came to speak with us and let us know that it wasn't all bad. His form of cancer was very slow progressing so we would have plenty of time and options to bring it dormant. We learned that brain cancer isn't normally cleared out rather it is put into a dormant state where it no longer progresses. This is about the time it really hit Owen that this wasn't going to end immediately, we already knew from our conversation with Dr. Swift. It was hard on him and hard to watch. But it's always darkest before the dawn! When this all began, only 10 days prior we were in immense fear that we may lose our kid and we now knew that we had a path to keep him with us. When we came up for breath we could see the outpouring of Love coming from friends and family and we began to realize we had no choice but to stay in the moment, both unexpected gifts that came from this situation. More to follow in part 4....