Allison was a lot more emotional today than normal. I'm not sure if it was the fact she was having surgery for a second time in a few hours or if it was all the well-wishers on Facebook or if it was just "one of those days"...but we went through a few more Kleenex's today than normal.
She's still SuperWoman, last night she was up late ironing, washing dogs, folding clothes, and on and on..."I don't want to leave all of this for you to do after my surgery." Are you kidding me? Who does that?? She's the epitome of "selfless" when it comes to things like that. I forget what personality type she was when we did our personality tests at church but she was the one that does all the things behind the scenes and never likes to be recognized...yep, look that up in Websters and you'll see her picture.
We made it to Patewood by 12:00pm and everything was right on time. They called us back quickly, gave her the sexy paper gown (this one was high-tech, I'll explain later), and Dr. Blouin checked in and said we're right on schedule. But "on schedule" was 2:00pm so we still had a wait ahead of us. On the wall was a piece of equipment that looked like a vacuum with a long hose. The high-tech sexy paper gown had a "port" for this hose to connect to. When she turned it on warm air started blowing into her gown and she began to take the shape of the Michelin Man. Weird, but very cool technology.
About 1:50pm the nurse says "I'm here to give you the good drugs" and puts something into Allison's IV that didn't take long to relax her. She still doesn't remember kissing me before they rolled her away. Guess I've got to work on the ol' kissing skills.
Thinking it would take 45 minutes we sit in the waiting room and wait, and wait, and wait... Finally an hour and a half later they call me back. Dr. Blouin apologizes for taking so long. There were 3 places that she needed to remove more tissue. All I remember was 2 of them contained the letters "erior" (like posterior, superior, or something) and 1 was "lateral". The pathology reported that the 2 "eriors" came back clean but that the "lateral" still was showing signs of cancer (hate that word). Dr. Blouin removed more tissue...pathology...still showing signs. Finally a third layer of tissue was taken and it came back clean. Those samples will now be sent off for a more thorough test like the first surgery.
We go back Tuesday to see Dr. Blouin. Hopefully by then the full pathology reports will be back (Lord, please let there be no cancer) and hopefully also the other test that helps determine the need for chemo will be back. Our prayer obviously is that this won't be necessary but Father, your will, not necessarily our will be done.
In recovery she complained of soreness, she wasn't sore after the first surgery. Dr. Blouin says she'll be more sore this time, a lot of tissue has been removed. That was unexpected, for some reason we were thinking this one was going to be easier. "Easy" isn't part of the Cancer Dictionary. They gave her a shot of something that the nurse said was more powerful than morphine and then a prescription of meds (not Lortab this time, that gives her "devil dreams"!). I'm honestly afraid she's going to have a harder time recovering from this one than the first one. But God is good and will continue to provide His perfect healing.
I check Facebook and see our faithful friends and family lifting us up...you guys are so awesome. Father, thank you for another day of life, thank you for being in control, thank you that you knew about this day long before Allison was even born. We trust you in Your plans for us. We don't understand it sometimes and we question you, please forgive us for our continual lack of faith. But thank you that You are much bigger than our problems and much bigger than our lack of faith. You always welcome us back with open arms. Father thank you for carrying us through this. We love you.
1 comment:
December 1st had been specially marked on our calendar, and we prayed for Allison, waiting eagerly to hear from Alice about the outcome. When we heard about the difficulties of the day, we knew that this challenge was greater than most and now our prayers are focused on Allison's recovery. Thank you, Chris, for your detailed report on this latest experience and your God-given faith. To God be all the glory!
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