December 18, 2009

Well...it's actually the 19th, but I didn't get to do this last night so here I am this morning.

We were to get to the hospital (Rochester Methodist Hospital) around 7:45 Friday morning, so I knew that Anne wasn't the first case of the day. We got up to the pre-op admission unit around 8:00, and they did the usual nursing stuff (interview, filling out paperwork, starting IV, taking pre-op meds, etc), and at 9:30am I took my leave as they took Anne up to the OR. They have a smallish family waiting area with TV, magazines and coffee. It was packed, but I was able to find a corner to plant myself (actually I sat under the TV, but I at least had a socket to plug in the computer). I was told that surgery would take aroud 4 hours, so I figured that she would be done around 2:00pm. At 11:30 I went down to the cafeteria and had a sandwich (or as my mother would say sangwich) and a cup of soup, then ran back up to the family waiting area. When I got there, a "nurse communicator" was actually just looking for me. "They just started her surgery at 11:43" he told me. Ok, they won't be done until nearly 4:00pm. No problem, I have my computer and a bunch of books, and I could look at one or two magazines. So I sat and waited, and waited and waited.

At 4:30pm, Dr. Wolff, the colorectal surgeon came down to talk to me. Surgery was over--they were just closing her up, he said. He did find the colon mass and was able to get it all out along with the surrounding lymph nodes. Everything looked fine from his standpoint, but he wouldn't know until the pathology report came back as to whether there was any viable tumor. Mainly, he did not need to do a colostomy (Praise God for that--I think that was what worried Anne the most), and he thought she did and will do fine. At around 5:00pm Dr. Nagorney came down to talk to me. From his standpoint the surgery went great. He got everything out that he needed to, including some lymph nodes. The intra-operative ultrasound of the liver showed no remaining tumors, and most importantly, all the tumor tissue that he took out was dead. The chemotherapy had killed everything! Is God awesome or what!!! He mentioned that one of his collegues wrote a recent article that showed that a response to chemo like this had a tremendous prognosis. Here's my shouting from the mountaintop!!!!

A little after he left, a nurse came and got me and brought me up to Anne's room. We didn't get the private room (yet) that she wanted (she was worried having me and the girls there would disturb her neighbor), but her roommate is leaving this morning so she may be in the room all by herself anyway--at least until Monday. "She should be here in about an hour or so" she said. I sat in the room and waited. And waited. And waited. Well, you get the picture. At 8:00--so she had been in recovery about 3 hours--they wheeled her down to the room. "We'll just be a minute" the nurse told me, as they had to transfer her to the bed. So I stood outside the room and waited. And waited. Well, anyway, after a while I was let back in. Anne was awake but pretty sleepy and sore. Her back was bothering her from laying flat on it for so long, so I helped her to get to her side. She was pretty puffy from the meds, but looked beautiful to me. We spoke for a bit, and at around 9:00pm, I left and went back to the hotel, sat at the bar, had a glass of wine and a salad for dinner. What a day. But thank God, this part os over. Now all she has to do is heal up, which should take all of 6 weeks or so. Then we can start our lives over again, and leave this all behind us.

My friend from Hopevale, George Puia, sent me this:

"I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, and
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you,
being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all
the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God's love, and to
know Christ's love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the
fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we
ask or think--according to the power that works in you--to Him be glory in the
church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen" Ephesians 3:14-21

Awesome!
God Bless,
Tony