December 21, 2009

"Superstar". That's Anne's new nickname, given to her by her surgeons. It sounds like they've almost never seen anyone recover so quickly from this kind of surgery. They're even talking of potentially discharging her tomorrow---3 days early! She is a superstar! She was up walking all over today. They yanked her foley catheter, pulled out her central IV line, and disconnected her from her IVs. She still has her drainage tube in, but that should be coming out tomorrow. They even advanced her diet quicker than they usually do. And, most importantly, she's even moved her bowels--earlier than expected! What a woman! We'll probably have to stay out here a couple more days before starting home, but that's still cool.

This morning, I missed her two surgeons who visited early, but I was there when the oncologist showed up. He had great news. The pathologist looked at the liver and found only necrotic (dead) tumor tissue, as we expected. They did find a small amout of live tumor in the colon, but the surgeon had cut everything out, so she doesn't even need chemotherapy now! She'll need followup labs and scans, of course, but they were very encouraged by the results. If only they knew our connection with God and all of you prayer warriors. They will actually be removing her port tomorrow that was used for the chemotherapy since she doesn't need it any more.

My verse for you today (I might have used it before):

Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
~ 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, NLT

Well, I can tell you that we are very joyful. We have been blessed beyond compare, and we are very thankful. I think we would have been thankful for all that God has done for us no matter what the outcome of all of this, but obviously, I'm not complaining about how this has worked out for us. We may never understand God's will, and I wonder if a lot of us will really find out what it is, but if it is His will that Anne is cured from this major cancer scare, there is good reason for it. I think we are to witness to everyone of God's greatness, and I hope this blog has helped some people to see how good (great, awesome, magnificent...) He is.

God Bless,
Tony

December 20, 2009

Anne continues to do well, in fact, she's way ahead of schedule. She got up and walked around 5 times today. She actually walked a fair amount each time. They progressed her to a full-liquid diet, which means she can have broth, juice and pudding. She has done very well as far as pain goes, although it still hurts for her to move around in bed. Her blood pressure is getting better too and her pulse rate is coming down. She was apparently pretty dehydrated which was not a bad thing, and that is also getting better. No bowel sounds yet, and she did have one episone of a sharp pain in her right upper quadrant, but even that didn't last long. Who knows, we might get to go home early.

The girl's luggage was delivered about 15 minutes after I finished writing the blog last night. They were already fast asleep, so I just left it in their room, which is adjoining to mine. I got up fairly early today and went over to see Anne around 8:00am. I wound up going to church at Trinity Presbyterian Church with my friend from Centurions, Helen Laack, whom I finally got to meet in person today. It was a very nice service with a wonderful sermon. It was quite nice to attend a more liturgical style of service than I do at Hopevale, but it was different than St. John's Episcopal Church which had a more high-church atmosphere, with all the pomp and circumstance that goes with that.

I arrived back at Anne's hospital room around 1:00 pm. I basically got there, said hello and took the girls to lunch across the street at a small family restaurant. The food was lovely. After lunch we took Anne for a walk around the nurses' station. Again, she is doing amazingly well. Thankfully, she's taken good care of herself over the years, so being so healthy has really helped with her recovery. She was able to sit in a chair for about 2 hours in the morning too. She looked even better today than she did yesterday, and I expect that to keep improving.

At church this morning, we sang the Doxology:

Praise God from Whom all blessngs flow;
Praise Him, all cretures here below: alleluia, alleluia!
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

We don't sing it at Hopevale. I don't necessarily miss singing it, nor do I miss not saying the Lord's Prayer and all of the other things we used to do at St. John's. It's just a different way of worship, and any worship is a good thing. They certainly do things differently in Nigeria, and I like that too. It is a wonderful song, however. And so true. All blessings do flow from God, as Anne and I are fully aware. And we sing His praises repeatedly.

God Bless,
Tony

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

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

December 17, 2009

How about this? Two days in a row!

Anne and I met with Dr. Alberts, an oncologist here at Mayo today. He basically said that as long as all of the pathology looks good, Anne may not need any more chemotherapy. That would be cool, of course. We met with Dr. Nagorney, the liver surgeon this morning as well. Unfortunately, we had hoped she could have her surgery done endoscopically, but apparently they won't be doing it that way because of he extent of what they have to cut out. Also, the combination of needing to do the colon with the liver makes it better to do it open. Apparently, on a good news front, the embolization procedure Anne had a month ago did what it was supposed to do--shrink the right lobe of the liver and make te left side grow bigger. Dr. Wolff, the colorectal surgeon will be starting he surgery tomorrow, with Dr. Nagorney following. We will be checking in to the Methodist Hospital at 7:45am--which means that she won't be going first at 8:00, but probably their 2nd case of the morning. I mentioned on the previous blog that we had checked in to a hotel across the street from St. Mary's Hospital. That's because we were under the impression that that was where she was having the surgery. We were wrong. So, we checked out of the SpringHill Suites and into the Kahler Grand, where we've stayed both other times we were here. They actually recognized us--we've got to stop coming here. This is an older hotel but it's in a perfect spot. You can get just about everywhere you need to go underground which is a good thing considering it's cold enough to freeze off body parts I really can't mention in a blog. I wound up reserving a second room for the girls for when they come.

I found this Bible verse recently:

"A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's
strength. "
Proverbs 17:22, NLT

I think this is where they got "laughter is the best medicine from". I've been trying to keep cheerful throughout this whole journey of ours--and trying to make Anne laugh as much as I can. We have had a lot of fun, spending a lot more time with each other than we have been able to over the past many years--mainly because of my work. Anne was asked if she would contribute to a new study they're doing here about colon and pelvic surgery. There were a lot of questions about sex in it--and boy can I do lots of jokes about that. She kept "shushing" me when she started filling it out in the exam room while we were waiting--which only made me crack even more jokes about it. The other side of this is how your strength can be sapped from you if you are constantly worrying, fretting, or whatever else you want to call it. There's no benefit from walking around being depressed, but if you have faith in God, you will give your troubles over to Him, and rejoice in the fact that God ("Father") knows best, and His will be done.

Thanks again for all of your prayers.

God Bless,
Tony

December 16, 2009

I promised I'd write this blog while we were out at Mayo, so here goes. We actually got in late last night. We left Saginaw at 8:50 am and pulled in here around 8:30 pm--so it actually took about 13 or so hours to get here. We did stop at a Bob Evans for lunch (yum!--Anne's choince, not mine). We were the youngest couple in there by at least 20 years. The lunch stayed with me until we got here. Our original plan was to stop somewhere along the way and sleep but since we didn't need to stop for dinner, we decided to keep going. I passed through La Crosse Wisconsin and figured we only had an hour and a half to go. I also thought that there would be somewhere along the way to stop for gas. Boy was I wrong. Can you imagine passing about 10 intersections on a highway with no gas stations on the exits? The Buick Enclave I was driving (actually it used to be my car--a substitute for my usual Surburban--but that's a whole different story) gets about 18 miles per gallon on the highway (not 21 or even 24 like they advertise). The "you're going to run out of gas soon" light came on and I checked the on-board computer. I had about 40 miles of gas left, and 33 miles to go. I don't know about you, but I didn't trust the car at all. So I prayed and prayed--and God came through as usual. This time it was with the Amish. They have a truck stop a few exits ahead of Rochester Minnesota, thankfully. I was so happy I almost bought a few pies from the service station!!!

Anne had booked a room at the SpringHill Suites for us, right across the street from St. Mary's Hospital, where we are pretty sure she will be hospitalized. The room is quite nice, about the same size as at the Kahler Grand where we have stayed before. The hospital is literally across the street. I probably wouldn't really even need a coat to get there, except it was -7 degrees out there last night, and I'd prefer that I not freeze off any body parts, thank you.

Anne had some bloodwork done today, as well as an EKG and a CT of the abdomen. Tomorrow we meet with an oncologist and both surgeons. She's already got a list of questions for them. Boy, do I hate it when a patient comes prepared like that! But, actually here they seem to enjoy it. Maybe because they're employees and don't have to worry about generating enough money to pay the rent. I guess I'll have to check if they're hiring orthopods.

After dinner I took Anne to the chapel at St. Mary's. I mentioned it in an earlier blog, but it's really a very large Catholic Church. It's absolutely beautiful. There was another couple there with a small child when we arrived, but after they left we were alone in a very divine place. You could certainly feel the presence of God there. I must admit that I do really love churches like that--especially the ones in Italy. I'm happy with Hopevale, of course, because it's not the building that makes the worship, but the people inside, but there is no question that there is something to be said about the grandeur that some of these churches have as part of their worship.

Today's passage is from Psalm 100:4-5:

"Enter [the Lord's] gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give
thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures
forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations."

I give thanks to God wherever I am these days. What He has done for us is unbelievable. Please pray with us that Anne does well on Friday. I also want to pray for all of the other people that have been brought to my attention that need His help.

God Bless,

Tony

December 12, 2009

Yes, it's that time again. I haven't written in a while because Anne has done quite well, but I wanted to get this one in before we head out to Mayo Clinic this coming Tuesday (the 15th). I'll ask right up front for some extra prayers for her: that she doesn't come down with a cold before the surgery which would postpone it, that I do a good job of driving us out there Tuesday whithout any "incidents", that Anne keeps a positive attitude (she has been somewhat down over the past couple of weeks, worrying about the upcoming surgery), that we have our questions answered by the 2 surgeons on thursday (that we haven't even met yet!), and that God guides their hearts, hands and minds while doing her surgery on the 18th.

Heather and Michelle will be coming out to visit on the 19th and will return home on the 23rd. We won't be together for Christmas for the first time ever, but they have been invited to spend the day with some of our best friends. Heather will be going to Pastor Mike and Rhonda Garner's house, and Michelle to Tom and Karen Zirkle's house. I am very thankful to their families for taking care of mine. Anne and I will most likely be out in Rochester Minnesota still. However, I spoke with my sister Anna yesterday, a surgical nurse, who said she recently scrubbed on a Hepatectomy case (removal of part of the liver like Anne will be having), and the surgeon told her he couls take out as much liver as he wanted by a laparoscopic technique. I know they can do solon resections that way. So, we'll have to all pray they can do that for Anne. Recovery and pain will be so much easier for her! And I assume we might be coming home earlier. We'll see, I guess. I have to leave that one in God's (and the surgeon's) hands.

This past few weeks we have been going over the Apostle's Creed at church. Pastor Dan, who is an awesome preacher, mentioned the Manhattan Declaration today, as something that we should read. It was written by a few religious leaders, including one of my favorites (and mentors) Chuck Colson. I believe it draws a line in the sand for us Christians over 3 specific topics: the sanctity of life, marriage, and religious liberty. Please check out the document at www.manhattandeclaration.org and sign it if you agree.

I promise to keep everyone posted while we're away at Mayo. I want everyone to know how great God is through what miracles He has done for us.

"Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations
what he has done." 1Chronicles 16:8