December 19, 2009

This should be a pretty short blog since not a real lot happened today. If you remember I wrote yesterday's blog this morning. I went over to see Anne shortly after that. She was propped up in bed smiling. She had been up in a chair already, mainly because her bed needed to be changed because of leakage of blood around her drainage tube from the liver area. To my amazement, her NG (naso-gastric) tube had already been removed, and they were already letting her drink some clear liquids. When I was an intern in general surgery 30 years ago, you'd be lucky to get clear liquids until 3-4 days after surgery. Her puffiness had gone down considerably. She was comfortable all day except when she tred to move around in bed. She was getting sore lying in bed, but sitting up made her "fuzzy" mainly because her hemoglobin had dropped from 12 to about 8.1. They don't like to transfuse unless it gets down to 7 which is OK by me. We got her up to walk around 5:00pm and she made one lap around the nurses station. We almost had to run to keep up with her. What a trooper.



The girls arrived at the Rochester airport at 1:00pm Minnesota time (2:00 Saginaw time). We waited for their bag to get on the carousel. And waited. And waited. Well, their bag (they had put their clothes in one bag to save money) never showed up. It apparently made it to Detroit, but not to Rochester. I'm hoping they get it by tomorrow. We stayed with Anne until a little after 7:00pm then went to dinner at Victoria's--my new favorite Italian restaurant. You can't eat an appetizer there and expect to finish dinner. In fact, you can't finish dinner even if you don't eat an appetizer. So, we packed up the "remains" to eat for lunch Sunday, and got to the hotel around 9:30pm. Still, a pretty long day, as a lot of it is sitting around waiting--now waiting for Anne to recover from the surgery. With God's help, I expect that to go incredibly well, as she has already shown after only 24 hours. I'm hoping she gets some rest without us there. We'll spend all day with her tommorow. I was invited to church by Helen Laack, a Centurion who lives out here in Rochester. I think the girls would like to come but their luggage hasn't arrived yet so they may not go since they don't have a change of clothes.

Here's how I feel now:

"Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song." Psalm 95:1-2

Only, I don't think you really want to hear me sing!

Interestingly, last February, when I was last in Nigeria, I was talking to my friend Andy Wallace about how blessed my life was--great wife, great kids, great (not always) job, good health (of course that was before Anne was diagnosed with cancer), you name it, I had it. Well, I can honestly say that my life is still blessed--in even more ways. I have a God and Savior who loves me unconditionally and I have a hugh number of friends who have helped me and Anne and the girls get through the biggest challenge of our lives with flying colors. Talk about a Christmas present!

God Bless (and He blesses all of us)
Tony