January 17, 2026
Day 8
Thank you for all the prayers and messages. I’m way behind answering but want you all to know we appreciate the love and care so much. Everything took about 5 hours last night. The neurosurgeon came up before they had closed with Tate and let me know what she saw.
The mass was very very close to Tate’s spine and was really lying on the bone. It didn’t look infectious and didn’t involve the muscle fibers meaning it wasn’t inflammation. It does look like a tumor but with a rare bacteria, our prayer is that it’s still potentially infection.
Tate’s TEE didn’t show any infection in the heart….no vegetation or clots. This is really good news for her heart and for clearing the infection. The other side of it was that it was thought infection in the heart seeded the lung nodules. We know now that’s not the case. So we are praying harder that the mass and lung nodules aren’t related.
We are hoping today that pathology will take a quick look and give us a classification on the mass. More specific paths will take a week.
Neurosurgery wants another mri today. We were hoping to combine this with anesthesia next week for Tates new central line, but it’s needed today. These are very difficult for Tate and she’ll likely have some light anesthesia again today.
Tate is in quite a bit of pain but is on a dilaudid pca that is helping her rest. She already lost her peripheral line that was placed during surgery and is on her 4th and 5th line (she needs two for all the meds/fluids) in 5 days. They wanted to put her on a heparin drip, but she just can’t keep enough access without a central line. The line from yesterday is starting to go too.
She is a rockstar and endures so much with little complaint. It was heartbreaking to find her in tears after surgery but I feel so much gratitude for the endless compassion and kind humans on all these teams this admission.