Well, they put a new cast on Tanner's left leg this morning. It has a short cast on the bottom of the leg and a short cast on the thigh and then it connects around the knee with a hinge so that he can move his leg and get some relief from it being in one position all the time.

It hurt Tanner considerably when they took the old cast off and tried to straighten his leg out. It was stuck in that slightly bent position at the knee from where the old cast had him positioned for nearly six months.

After having it on all day and being able to move his knee around, Tanner has decided that he likes it much better than the regular full leg cast.

We went up to the hospital tonight so that they could perform the new "DWIB" test that Dr. Barlogie ordered and come to find out, it's performed in an MRI machine and they can't do it with metal in the cast.

Soooo, in the morning they are going to call MIRT and see what Dr. Barlogie wants to do. They said maybe he will let Tanner wait and have the test done when he comes back in January or he might want them to take the cast off, put on a splint, do the test, and then re-cast him. Or, he might want them to put him back in a regular cast since Tanner has to have a full range of tests done in January.

I personally hope that he will just let Tanner wait until January when we come back for all the re-staging tests, but you never know what he will say. If he wants to see the results of these tests badly enough, we will probably be heading back to the cast room tomorrow to have the cast removed.

I thought for a moment there that Tanner was about to get a little teary when they told him the doctor might want him to go over and have the new cast removed tomorrow so they can do the tests.

I guess these doctors just don't communicate with each other before these decisions are made. You would think an Oncologist Orthopedic Surgeon who is used to treating Dr. Barlogie's Multiple Myeloma patients would realize how many tests are undergone every 1-2 months. But then again, I don't think they've had too many patients who have had to stay in a full cast for six months at a time.

We are going in at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow for labwork and then we are just going to walk over to MIRT and see what they want us to do.

On a lighter note, we went across the street today and visited with Tom and Shirley. Tanner wanted to show off his new cast - and also take them some Turtles (candy) that we bought them for Christmas. They gave Tanner a new Northern Face toboggan for Christmas and he and Shirley both put them on and looked like twins!

We are really going to miss them when we go home and hope that we all stay in touch. They have been wonderful neighbors!