Maggie is doing fine.  She’s in LA this weekend with her friend Amy doing things she enjoys: shopping, eating, shopping.  She called home last night to confirm that she’s having fun… like Chris was worried about that.

Her lower-abdomen pain is still quite present but we think we’ve gotten a handle on it so that it’s not so unmanageable.  She’s back to taking pain meds, although limiting to late evening and only half a pill at a time.  And this time with a full stomach.  One nice thing, albeit a little twisted, is that we are pretty confident that even though Maggie is in pain she’s not hurting herself physically.  In other words, she may hurt but she’s not damaging her body further by continuing to move about.  Good to know, really, but it’s just s crappy situation.

It’s somewhat unfortunate that this pain has cropped up because Dr. Loukas was hoping to continue chemo for a little while longer before they went in for surgery.  But hey, sometimes things don’t go exactly perfectly.  We will chat with him on Monday on what the plan is but we are expecting that she’ll have a couple things happen in quick succession:  a PET scan and then into the hospital for another surgery.  We are hoping (REALLY hoping) that the surgery this time around will be laparoscopic so as to minimize the scaring and recovery time.  That slicing open the whole abdomen stuff is really unpleasant.