Jon's Update on Abby

Jon, I'm fixing this post.  It looks like you sent it by phone and it chopped your post up into a lot of pieces.  I've tried to put all the pieces together but it appears that several parts are missing.  You can either fix it by going into Edit Posts or I can fix it if you send me the info.   Colista




First of all, my family and I just want to express our love to everyone for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. The past few days have been a roller coaster with things flying at us so quickly that you don't even realize what's happened until a few minutes later.

Just to catch everyone up on whats been going on, early in July we started to notice that our middle daughter, Abigail Marie, was getting pretty clumsy. We figured that this was only due to a growth spurt and she was trying to adjust to her new body. When things didn't progress and Abigail continued to be clumsy, we thought that maybe she would need glasses like her mom and dad and all grandparents. Maegan took her to the eye doctor on Tuesday who gave her a clean bill of eye health. My wonderful wife, knowing that something was wrong with out girl, called our pediatrician Dr Dodson and scheduled her the first available appointment. We met with Dr. Dodson on Thursday at 1:45pm and she recognized that something was wrong. By the time, Abbey was walking like a very intoxicated person- swayin

d a mass near the central brain, very close to the brain-stem. We were then told that St Louis Childrens Hospital was waiting for our arrival. We quickly ran home and literally threw clothes in a bag and we ran out the door to the hospital. Once at the hospital, we tried to sleep that night with minimal results. At this point Abigail really didn't know what was happening besides the fact that mommy and daddy and grandma and grandpa miller and aunt boo were crying a lot and upset. Mary-Beth and Emily were happy to be staying with my parents here in St Louis. Friday we woke up and got ready for an MRI which ended up taking place Friday afternoon. The MRI took around 2 hours and she had to be sedated for it. We thought that due to Abigail's loss of swallowing ability that they were going to put in a feeding tube. During the cat scan they had noticed that there appeared to be a blockage that was keeping the fluid from draining down the spinal column as well as the large growth. During the MRI th

The doctor than went over the MRI with us and told us the not good news...Abigail has a malignant tumor low in her mid-brain, very close to if not touchi

at were controlling her mouth functions and swallowing functions. He told us that what was more than likely going to happen was radiation chemotherapy, surgery or a combination of them.
By this time, Abigail was having a very hard time walking
Ill post more tomorrow.  I'm going to hit the bed!


ll go drain that fluid, so they sent us from the MRI to the pediatric ICU. Abigail, being the strong girl that she is, did well responding to the steroids and did not have to have a shunt put in (yet... That may be something that occurs in the future). We have just