Arian & Morgan Howard

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.   Anyone who knows our family at all, already knows a lot of the back story...but just in case, I'll attempt to keep this brief.  Again, if you know me well...that is a bit of a struggle at times!  My side of the family has a genetic colon disease called Familial Adenemotous Polyposis.  It is caused by a mutated APC gene.  This gene, if normal, suppresses polyp growth  for most of a humans life...that is why most people can start having colonoscopies at 50 and then only every 10 or so years.   In the Laster side of our family tree, most of us are diagnosed between the ages of 10 and 16 with multiple polyps in both the upper and lower digestive tracts.  I had my large intestine removed when I was 17 (almost 29 years ago) so when Robbie and I started our family, we knew to have our children screened.  Arian and Morgan went for their first scope at the age of 10 and have continued having at least a lower scope every summer since then.  They usually had somewhere between 10-30 polyps and the gastroenterologists (Dr. Higgins and Dr Lynch) removed and biopsied however many polyps they located.  This past summer, the girls turned 18 and graduated both from high school...but also to an adult gastroenterogist, Dr. Shear (my current doctor).  He scoped Morgan in July and removed 69 polyps (and that was about 80% of what he located.  Today, Arian was scoped and she has 50 and he removed and biopsied about 25 of them.  Both Dr. Shear and Dr. Kedia (that I recently saw in Dallas for a specialized scope) both indicated that any number over 50 signaled that surgery needed to be quickly considered.  The girls have had upper scopes as well for the last couple of years and Morgan's upper count is 22 (very small polyps) and Arian's is 8.  The doctor is not as concerned with the upper numbers (at least at this time.)   I've been reminded many times recently that we were blessed with getting the girls one more year further than I got before surgery...and with this came not messing with the end of their high school "career".  They will both be starting the fall semester at Amarillo College, but there is a longer break for college students at Christmas time, so that is a good thing.  As time goes on...Morgan and Arian might feel like adding to this site, but for now, mom's got control of the keyboard.  We are very thankful for all the thoughts and prayers on our behalf.  The girls are handling the news well, possibly better than mom is at the moment...if you are a mom, you know it is easy to go through things yourself than watch your child go through it.  In our Wednesday evening chapter studies, we recently read Job 1-3..Job 2:10 says in part "Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?"