When God Sends You a Flashing Neon Sign

 Have you ever asked God for a sign? How about a really specific sign? How about a flashing neon sign? Yep. That was me. I did that. You see, two years ago the radiologists' measurements on my MRIs showed that my tumor had grown, significantly. Between the MRI that we'd settled on as our baseline, taken about four months after my resection surgery, and the one taken in June of 2024, there was about a 76% increase in volume. Considering you only need to see 20% increase to be considered in "progression" and moving on to the next stage of treatment, this was a lot, even though the tumor itself was still pretty tiny, only about 1 sq cm, so the growth was pretty tiny as well. At that point, my surgeon referred me over to the Tumor Center and said that I'd likely need radiation treatment, though he wasn't an expert and deferred to their wisdom. 

 After my first, not great, appointment, we were assigned to the head of Neuro Radiology Oncology who was an amazing blessing, in hindsight perhaps in more ways than one. She had a different approach to watching and measuring tumors and put very little faith in those done by the MRI radiologist. You see, measuring a tumor on an MRI is very much like trying to measure a child's crayon drawing with a ruler. Three different people will get three different measurements. And while the MRI takes many, many "slices" in its pictures of my brain, they are not perfectly aligned. So, with a tumor this tiny, even a few millimeters of difference in where the image is taken can mess with your measurements, allowing for a pretty big margin of error. My Radiation Oncologist took a different approach. She has a piece of software that merges different MRIs together and then you can scroll through them to see differences. Using this, she said that she didn't see any notable differences between the scans and that I was best watching and waiting.

 The next year, 2025, we received much the same message, "No real change, watch and wait". My husband and I had, by now, read all the studies and information we could get our hands on regarding my tumor, and the outlook post progression/radiation was not encouraging, so we set our minds to making the most of this reprieve, of the time we had - not knowing how much of it there would be. If you've been following along with me for a while, you'll have witnessed that we squeezed every drop of life out of the last two years!

 Leading up to any imaging I, or my loved ones, have had done, I've often prayed that God would draw attention to and highlight anything that needed to be seen. I've prayed this in various ways, but this time I remember praying a rather specific prayer that God would light up anything that needed to be seen with a "flashing neon sign." While I was in the MRI, the tech came over the speaker at one point and said, "I'm going to run that last one again." He made some excuse about getting better visualization around the shunt, but I could tell by his voice that something wasn't right - that he had seen something unusual. Then, when the PA came in to do my shunt adjustment a couple of hours later, he seemed a little off as well, and mentioned that they had been reviewing my imaging and talking about my case. They had never mentioned this before, although who knows, maybe they always do. So, when my doctor came in, I was ready for something a little different than the previous "everything's the same" message, but I wasn't prepared for a direct, literal answer to prayer:

 

 Right there before us, the area of growth was lit up like someone had taken a highlighter to it. My doctor did not know why it would be like this, why one area of the tumor would light up in this way and the rest of it wouldn't, but now, when she scrolled through the imaging, none of us could deny that there was a difference. God had literally lit up the change with a flashing neon sign! She wasn't inclined to determine a course of treatment based solely on imaging, but when she read over our account of what my symptoms had been doing over the last few months: migraines, vertigo, serious balance issues, increased tinnitus; she felt like our path forward was clear. It was time to start radiation. She wanted to run everything by the tumor board (or as I affectionately call them, the "Brain Trust") and, counter to what she'd said in the past, she wanted to hear back on the radiologist's measurements of the MRI before we settled anything for sure though, and she told us that she'd get back to us by the end of the week.

 

 That didn't happen. Friday came and went, and there wasn't a peep on my phone. I sent in a MyChart message over the weekend checking in and asking when we might hear back, and we received a reply on Monday saying they were still waiting on the final reading of the MRI. That seemed really strange to us as, every other MRI we've had done in the past, we saw a report within a couple of hours. It had been over a week and we didn't have anything in my test results at all. WEIRD! And frustrating. For two people that love data, not having anything to go on was so frustrating. Tuesday evening, the MRI report finally appeared on MyChart. Reading over it was confusing, like deciphering another language, but with the help of AI we gathered that the radiologist wanted it stated for the record that they had said the tumor had grown significantly back in June of 2024 and they stood by that. They didn't see any notable difference since then, apart from the strange glowing area that they couldn't explain either. We weren't sure what to make of that. Finally, Wednesday afternoon we got a call from my doctor's office. The tumor board had reviewed my case and the consensus was that I had officially reached progression and they all recommended proceeding with radiation. 

 

 While consensus and signs are all nice, when you're faced with something as big as this, you start to question and rethink your part of it. This decision was reached based on BOTH imaging and symptoms, and the symptoms were reported by me. So, was I exaggerating? Were things really as bad as I'd reported? If I backpedal, if I reconsider how dizzy I've been, does that mean we should not do radiation? The pressure here is not insignificant. I'm looking back to my arm surgery. In hindsight, I don't think my pain was bad enough to warrant it. I wish I hadn't done it. I'm so much worse off after. What if this is like that? What if I'm jumping into something unnecessarily and sabotaging the rest of my life? AAAAAAA!!!!!!!

 Thankfully, we're not doing radiation tomorrow. The doctor felt that this was a slow enough growth that waiting until September wouldn't cause any harm, and I have one more very important trip left on my bucket list that I want to get in before I take this next step in treatment. The more I read and learn, the less rosy my travel future looks and I want to take this one last trip with my son while I can. This also allows me time to think, to process, to analyze, to pay real attention to my symptoms. If I magically feel much, much better over the summer, we can reassess in August before kicking things off. Really, though, my prayer request is that God would continue to litter my path with flashing neon signs. Even if that means I get worse. Even if that means I have some symptoms that I've been desperately afraid of. I just want to know with as much certainty as possible that I'm doing the right thing. I definitely don't want to hypochondriac my way into radiation!

Here's the Thing: I asked God for a flashing neon sign, and He answered. That in and of itself gives me so much peace. I believe that I'm where I'm supposed to be right now. I believe that He's showing us what's going on in my head, really in a rather incredible way. I believe He's gotten the attention of my team right when He wanted to, at just the right time. I'm so very grateful for all I've gotten to do over the last couple of years, I wouldn't trade it. I trust that He'll whisper truth to my heart and show me His path.