10/02/2025
Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Tuesday morning, Joe posted “This morning is not going as planned.” Here’s what was happening before then…
Monday’s plan was to take Tillery to the salon for a little pampering before heading to the hospital to be admitted at noon. While she was having her hair done, the neurosurgeon’s office called to say he wanted to see us in his office across town before we went to the hospital. We rushed from the salon to his office and after a long wait, he came in to talk to us at about noon. He pulled us into the hallway to look at her scans on big screens. He again walked us through the plan for surgery and then stopped on one small area and said “I don’t know if I can safely get to this piece.” It appeared to be deep into tissue that looked healthy and resting on the hypothalamus. The risk to try may not be worth it. He said he felt good about everything else but felt like he needed to let us know that there was a good possibility there would still be a small amount of tumor cells left and she would probably need to stay on her chemo pills even after the surgery. Joe and I just stood there without words. What do you say? We’ve told our girl we were fighting to make her tumor free and less than 24 hours before surgery, the surgeon is no longer confident. We questioned if it was even still worth proceeding. But there was no time for discussion because immediately we were back in the room with the kids, rushing to grab lunch and then rushing to the hospital because we were now 2 hours late to check in. Nana and Poppo arrived in town and Joe and I stepped into the hallway together for just a quick minute to look at each other and say “do we even do this?” and our answer was “I don’t know.” Monday night, Joe slept at the hospital with Tillery and I slept in the hotel with Luke. I woke up Tuesday morning sobbing. I did not have a good feeling and I still wasn’t sure if we would sign consent papers that morning.
Then, things got worse…
We got down into the pre-op holding area and different people were coming by to introduce themselves. We met the nurses and anesthesia team who would be with Tillery. Then we saw Dr. Klimo coming our way and he asked for Joe and I to step to the side with him. We walked over to a small computer desk and pulled up chairs and imaging. Monday evening Tillery had a new MRI and CT scan. The MRI looked the same as before but the CT told a new story. Dr. Klimo scrolled around within the image pointing to bright white areas all around within the tumor. They were calcified tumor. His assumption was that as the chemo was “killing” the tumor cells, it was turning them into calcium. The calcium was everywhere. EVERYWHERE! The problem with this is that calcium makes tumor really “hard and chunky” and also sticky. He said it throws a wrench in the whole plan. He feared the calcium would be nearly impossible to safely remove. And again, it’s almost all calcified. He shows us a few lighter areas on the imaging that he felt confident he could remove and he would still send samples of everything so it’s all still a good thing “for research”. Dr. Klimo looked us in the eyes at the time when he was about to walk into the operating room with our girl and gave us 50/50 odds on being able to remove the tumor. He was so sure he could not get it all that we called her oncologist on speaker phone to begin conversations about if there are any other chemo options for Tillery (there are not), did he think new samples of tumor could lead us to a new/different treatment option (he did not think so), and should we start conversations about radiation as our next step. Dr. Klimo said he would still do it if we wanted but we all agreed if we had had this information back in May, we would not be sitting in pre-op right now. He said he would give us time to decide if we even wanted to proceed and then he walked away. Joe and I sobbed. We hated everything about that conversation. We hated this information. We hated that she’s out of options. We hated radiation. We hated a surgery that could only remove small pieces. We hated that this was happening on the day we were supposed to be getting a miracle. WHY?!?! Over Joe’s shoulder I saw a group hovering outside Tillery’s room. The whole OR team was there waiting to see if they were about to get sent home for the day. I don’t even know what we said to each other but I know what we felt was the multitudes of prayers that had been heaped out on us. We felt a weird comfort in our devastation. Joe shook Dr. Klimo’s hand and said “take care of my little girl” and we pulled ourselves together to walk back into the room with our kids. We gave Tillery kisses and said a prayer together as a family over her right before they rolled her out. We got on the elevator to go down to meet Nana and Poppo (and our friend Celeste who surprised us by driving over to wait with us all day). We looked at Luke with tears in our eyes and said “the doctor isn’t going to be able to get it all today”.
We joined our crew and shared with them as we all cried together. We didn’t have the words to share that news with everyone yet. So we didn’t call off our prayer warriors. You all continued to pray without knowing what we had just been told. You all prayed for safety in the OR that you didn’t know we had just been told was unsafe. You prayed for confidence for a surgeon when you didn’t know he’d lost his confidence. You prayed for peace over us parents without knowing how unsettled we were. And you kept praying for the miracle that we were just told was not coming, not today, not ever.
Eleven hours later, Dr. Klimo told us he got it all.
That is what prayer can do!
That’s what we call a MIRACLE!
