Praise the Savior ye who know Him,
Who can tell how much we owe Him,
Let us gladly render to Him,
Al we have and are.

Just wanted to say to every one who has prayed written, and encouraged us so in the Lord. I am out of the hospital and just Praising the LORD.

One of our sons compared my length of hospital stay to that of an appendectomy. Our surgeon was elated with my bounce back and very elated with the success of 90% of the tumor taken with no collateral damage. So much for an inoperable tumor. Praise the LORD. more…

Dear Praying Friends,

Mom and Dad met with an oncologist (tumor specialist) and radiologist today at the Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee. (Special thanks to my sister, Andrea, for driving them there from her home in Madison.) The day was long but encouraging.

Doctors want to operate on Dad on Sunday, Feb. 22, and remove at least half if not all of his brain tumor. They feel confident that they can perform surgery without too much risk. Dad may suffer some minor side effects like numbness to his left side or some impairment to his vision. (They say that the tumor has already caused some damage to his vision.) While in surgery, the surgeon is hoping to insert some wafers of chemo or packets of radiation into what’s left of Dad’s tumor to zap what’s left. This technique has often been effective. The doctors said they operated on another man with the same cancer; that was three years ago, and he is doing well. Others they have operated on, however, have not responded as well. You just have to wait and see. The doctor looked my dad in the eye and said, “If you were my dad, I’d tell him to have this surgery.” more…

I wrote this yesterday from the hospital and e-mailed it to the Blumer family mailing list:

Dear family,

I am writing to you from a waiting room at the hospital. We talked to the doctor a short while ago after Dad’s biopsy. Here is what we know:

Dad does have cancer. It’s called a meninglioma. On a scale of 1 to 4 (4 being the most aggressive), Dad has a 3 and possibly a 4 (further tests will determine whether it’s a 4). They are giving him about 13 months with chemo and radiation. The doctors do not feel comfortable with removing the tumor, which is about 5 centimeters in size.

However, there is some good news. This type of cancer did not originate from anywhere else in his body, and the rest of his body (as far as tests show now) is clean. Also, this type of cancer is typically self-contained, which means it doesn’t usually spread to other parts of the body. So what he has should be all there is, and it probably won’t spread. more…

I’m afraid I have difficult news to share. Mom called me a little while ago, and I’m here to share it with you so you can know how to pray. John and Andrea (my sister and her husband) arrived, and Mom and Dad are heading back to Newberry now. The doctor who looked over the MRI is certain that Dad has cancer. I guess they can tell a lot from the MRI. The cancer is also inoperable, which means they are unable to remove it without causing damage to Dad’s brain and impairing him in some way. The good news is that there is no second tumor. There is only the one. more…

At around 3 p.m. yesterday, my sister, Andrea, called me with the results of Dad’s CAT scan. My dad, Larry Blumer, has experienced a few weeks of dizziness to the point that my mom, Rhoda, didn’t want him driving. We all expected that this was only an inner-ear infection. We were wrong.

Dad has a tumor about the size of a walnut inside his skull behind his right ear. It also appears that another tumor may be located at the other side of his brain. Whether this is cancer we don’t yet know. The doctors checked my dad’s lungs, and they are fine. I am waiting to hear from my mom or my sister this morning since the doctors at the small hospital in Newberry, Michigan, told my dad to go to Marquette General Hospital in Marquette, Michigan. Last night, the doctors there were ready to receive my dad and do more tests to determine what can or cannot be done. I haven’t yet heard what they discovered and decided. more…