You may be aware that Travis has been suffering some headaches and stomach nausea recently that kept getting worse over the last few weeks. He has had various tests done over the last couple of days (and past couple of months) at Rady Children’s Hospital. They have confirmed our worst fears and found a tumor in his 4th brain ventricle and performed surgery to remove it.

We met with the surgeon after the surgery on Thursday evening and he reported that the tumor came out clean and everything went as well as he expected. Travis is recovering in his room now. We are breathing a big sigh of relief over this first step. We won’t know the exact next steps for a few days since the doctors want to do a full pathology on the tumor before deciding on any future treatment. So, we are just taking things one step at a time and focusing on helping Travis to feel better.

As you can imagine, we never thought we would be here in our wildest dreams. It has been an emotional roller coaster going from talking about the possibility of migraines on Wednesday morning to finding out about the tumor that afternoon and then having the surgery Thursday. The good thing is that we have one of the top neurosurgeons in the world and he says that we caught things early. Also, Travis is a little fighter, unlike his dad who cries over a paper cut, so they are optimistic about a quick and full recovery.

Tyler has been a huge help through all of this! We have had to rely on him and trust him to be responsible at home while we are at the hospital. Since we came in here Monday night, Tyler has: taken care of dinner for himself (Monday-Wednesday); taken care of Cisco, done his homework; gotten in bed on time; and gotten up for school all by himself. We have told him over and over how much this means to us that we can depend on him to be responsible while we need to be with Travis. We have been alternating nights where one of us stays at the hospital and the other goes home before Tyler goes to bed and gets up with him in the morning. On Wednesday night, we sat down with him and explained everything we had just learned that day. Tyler said that he was nervous for Travis. Before Travis’ surgery on Thursday, we asked Tyler to make a video for Travis. He did a great job talking to Travis, showing him Cisco (our dog) and Travis’ room. Travis really liked it! On Thursday, we brought Tyler down to the hospital after school so that he could be there when Travis came out from surgery. Tyler did fine understanding what was going on and getting everything set for Travis to return to his room. But it did seem to bother him when Travis came up to his room in full head bandage and in some pain. Tyler said that he felt light headed and we had him sit down for a while. We have made arrangements for Tyler to have dinner with friends tonight and they will pick him up after school. Most likely, depending on how Travis is feeling, we are planning to have Tyler come down with us this weekend.

Love,

Tony and Lynne