Mom update

After weeks of research, appointments, prayer, and analysis, Mom finally went through with surgery today. As everyone who knows her knows, she is very reluctant to walk through the doors of a hospital, and after I heard about all the things that happened in the last couple days, I'm surprised she didn't check herself out before the operation this morning.

Apparently, when she was in the pre-op stages, a lot of machines were not working. She got on a scale, and it didn't work. They tried to do an EKG, and that machine didn't work. Even the bathroom lights weren't working this morning -- so they had to give her a flashlight to take in with her! And then even the flashlight broke! This all would not have bolstered her trust in the medical community, I'm thinking.

As my dad was relaying all this to me today, I said, "Well, I'm glad they made all those marks on her skin yesterday, to show where they're going to make incisions. At least we'll know they just have to follow the arrows today."

"Oh no," Dad answered. "That's another thing that didn't work: all the marks came off last night! So they had to re-do all that this morning."

What were they using yesterday? Crayola washable markers?? My kids could give those doctors a lesson on how to write on skin with permanent markers so it won't come off for days, even weeks.

Anyway, somehow Mom managed to stay -- maybe they had her strapped into a gurney by that point -- and the surgery went forward.

We were very, very relieved to find out that the first surgeon found no evidence of cancer in the first lymph nodes they took out, so they didn't have to remove any more. (which is good, since Mom was saying 2 days ago that she did NOT want them taking out any more than 3 lymph nodes -- because she thinks she "needs them!" I'm glad she didn't have to wake up mid-surgery to tell them to STOP.)

The 2nd surgeon also brought a good report, saying that everything went as expected, and there were no surprises. We are all soooooo thankful!

Hopefully, she will be going home tomorrow, and her recovery can begin. Both arms will be partially out of commission for awhile, and she has some drains, but we're hoping God will continue the grace He has been pouring out on the whole situation, and her healing will be quick.

So, we praise God today for being merciful to us and to Mom and giving us the best-case scenario here. All in all it's been a very good day. In fact, that hardest part of the day for me ended up being the 5 minutes I spent trying to wrestle my van into a spot in the parking garage.

Tonight at dinner Colsen wanted to pray, and in his usual mixed-up 3-year-old type of prayer, he said, "Thank you God for celebrating Nonna in the hospital today." At first I wanted to correct him, but then I realized that was actually pretty accurate. Mom's theme through this whole journey has been "count it all joy" -- and today it was easier to do that.