Meeting with Neurosurgeon done!

First of all, I would like to say that today, September 5 is exactly one year to the day that we got the news that Madelyn was NED!!! Praise God!!!!

Well, we met with Dr. Smith the Neurosurgeon on Wednesday. Everything went well and we really liked him. He was straight to the point and Madelyn really took to him after warming up to him. He really liked her too, but what's not to like. Dr. Smith agrees with Rick and I. He said the tumor by Madelyn's spine IS NOT CANCER! He said if it is not causing her pain or interfering with anything neurological, then we are not going to mess with it. We can monitor it with the regular MRI's that we are doing every 6 months and if we see any change from the MRI's or if it starts causing her pain then we will obviously reconvene and re-evaluate, other than that we are not going to mess with it!

Ms. Madelyn has started preschool. She's been there 2 weeks now and she LOVES it. At first she kept saying that she wanted to go to church, because the nursery at church is the only nursery she has ever been too. But now she says everynight when I say goodnight to her, "go to school tomorrow". She is only going 3 full days a week this year, we'll put her in 5 days next year. We have already seen a change in her, she sings different songs, talks about the kids at school and just seems more independent. We went to an open house last night and it really is amazing the things that they start teaching at such a young age. The teachers kept commenting on how smart Madelyn is and how she loves to go up to the wall that all the letters are hung on and tell them what each of them are. Ok, so I am going to brag for a minute, this is some of the new things Madelyn has been doing:

Knows every letter of the alphabet to say and while looking at the letter
Knows 1-11 numbers while looking at it
Counts to 20
Counts to 5 in Spanish
Can spell her first, middle and last name
Can write an "M" "A" and kind of write a "D"
Starting to know her left from her right, we have been working on this this week.

She truly is an amazing little girl who will be 2 on the 20th of this month by the way!!! We are going to have a birthday party at school for her on the 19th and then we are having another birthday party for her at the Bounce Around on Saturday. My brother and fiance, Liz, are coming down for it, we are so excited.

Her next checkup at the clinic is on 9/30. The will test her VMA/HVA and hopefully everything will be just fine for another 2 months. We'll update when we know the results.

Just wanted to update you all and thank you so much for keeping up on Madelyn's progress. She continues to amaze me everyday and I am so in awe of her.

Also remember September is Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month and more specifically Sept. 13 is National Pediatric Cancer Awareness Day. Let's remember all of those who are battling, or have battled this terrible, terrible beast! Please click on this link to sign a petition to draw more of the National Cancer Research funds for Pediatric Cancer Research. Amazingly enough only 3% of the research money goes towards researching cures for children's cancer...what a shame. But please sign the petition and do your part in helping to change this.

Lots of love,
The Bell's