We met with our surgeon here in Dallas today. He actually called and talked to us for a long time last night about options too, but we still went into the office today to discuss further. Basically, he laid out the two best options. The first option is to remove the tumor that is on the top of the tibia and do a complete knee replacement. It is more complicated than that, but essentially a total knee replacement. This is possible because he feels comfortable that we can achieve good margins around the tumor which is important to help prevent a recurrence. The second option is amputation. He does not feel that amputation gives her a significantly better chance of the cancer not coming back again - so we have decided to do the knee replacement here in Dallas.
We are tentatively scheduled for surgery on Monday, February 4th. It does sound like a long recovery, especially with the 5-day rounds of chemo that will need to happen while her body is trying to heal from surgery and that she can't bend her knee AT ALL for 6-8 weeks... but she is tough and an All-Star on crutches. As you probably know, knees don't last long - about 15 years (these days) so she will likely have to have another knee replacement when she is 30. He does believe that in 15 years the technology might be better and hopefully, her next knee will last longer than 15 years.
We've been worried about working through the options for a while now, and we appreciate all of the extra prayers for us and our physicians to help come up with the right options. We feel really good about our decision.
**Update: The surgery is confirmed for Monday, February 4th at 8:00am at Medical City Dallas.
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