Partial Plan

Hello All

Well we met with Dr Velez yesterday and we now have the beginnings of a plan. Ben will be going in for surgery tomorrow (Friday) afternoon to have a port inserted. For those of you who don't know the port is a semi-permanent "button" inserted into a vessel in his chest. It will give the doctors and nurses access to give Ben medications and Chemo with out an IV that would have to be changed out every few days. The port gets "accessed" when they need to give him stuff and can stay accessed for extended periods of time while an IV has about a 3 day max. When no accessed its basically just a bump or button under his skin. They will also be able to draw blood from it, so basically it means much fewer needle sticks for Ben and a nice stable access point for med delivery. (Hope I explained that well enough!)

Dr Velez will be consulting with colleagues including Dr Warren at NIH who is recognized as the leading expert in this type of cancer, she has Ben in loop (via phone) on Ben's care though out. They will go over all available protocols that Ben may be eligible for and we will then discuss there recommendations next week. But regardless of which we choose Ben will need the port so we have decided to get started on that.

It should be a short hospital stay maybe just one night, for port placement. So say a few extra prayers for Ben tomorrow afternoon that the procedure goes well and there isn't much pain.

As always thank you for all the support.

Erin