Wow! Finished!

Lucy and Nurse Gina

Lucy has finished her proton radiation! She went for her final treatment in Jacksonville last week followed by a Hello Kitty party thrown by the staff, then headed straight to Thanksgiving celebration

Uncle Stephen

in Auburn for a couple of days, then traveled all the way home Thursday night.

Uncle Stuart

Exhaustion, a bad cold, and re-adjustment

to family and home have slowed our full acceptance of the good news, like when exams are over but the stress lingers…

Dr Marcus

Dr. Marcus (shown here with Hello Kitty because Lucy had just woken up and did not feel like posing; he also holds Lucy’s card for him which came from Swaziland), her radiation oncologist, informed us that the latest research gauging the

Katie knew the proper kind of cake!

efficacy of proton radiation in craniopharyngiomas shows a phenomenal success rate. He does not expect Lucy to have any other side effects related to the treatment itself from this point because of the small amount of brain that was radiated. We have joked that she has not lost any hair, but I have been losing mine for months– a symptom I actually found common among the other patients’ mothers, apparently an outcropping of stress!

Lucy feels anxious to understand what else is ahead of her: how many MRIs, what kind of IV, etc. She feels dislocated after getting used to her routine in Florida.

We are having lots of conversations… It is wonderful, however, to see a safe and

calm look return to her eyes after so many days in a row colored with anesthesia and the weariness of her unrelenting effort toward courage.

We remain grateful for the wonderful staff at the Florida Proton Institute, and for the friends we met who were making the same journey– they remain always in our hearts.