Meeting with Dr. Katz

Jake has a favorite stuffed animal named "Mr. Kitty" who he received from his Nana on his 1st birthday.  Jake has a habit of running Mr. Kitty's tags in between his fingers and it is so cute!  Jake's oncologist is Dr. Katzenstein (Katz for short) and we think it's no coincidence that Jake's stuffed buddy and the doctor who's going to get rid of this disease have similar names.  Hey, we'll take any indication of hope that we can get!  

We received a call from Dr. Katz on Monday.  He told us that the cancer is localized, meaning it has not spread!!!

Thank God for answered prayers!  We have been overwhelmed and rendered speechless by the amount of prayers and support given to us by, not only family and friends, but also complete strangers.  It has been a very humbling experience thus far. 
We met with Dr. Katz today , as well as the social worker, child life specialist, nurse practitioner, and nursing team.  All of these people will be working with us to make Jake’s treatment go as smoothly as possible.  It is a complete understatement to say that these people at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta – Egleston are amazing.  They are on the ball and we couldn’t be happier to place our baby in their hands.  As a matter of fact, every doctor that Jake has seen has been nothing but fantastic.  He has a wonderful, caring, and attentive pediatrician, Dr. Angela Hutchins-Howard.  All of our kids have been treated by her since birth and we couldn’t fathom changing physicians.  We firmly believe that things happen for a reason and the chain of events and people involved leading up to today were put in place for the purpose of catching the cancer early.  We did, however, get a big wake-up call when the oncologist said that the survival rate for this type of cancer is 65% to 70%.  I guess I’ve been in some kind of denial about the severity and seriousness of Ewing’s, so today was a little depressing for me.  I’m sure it won’t be the last depressing day and I will have to work hard to be strong for Jake.  We have to beat this, there is just no other choice.