Tuesday Noon and Results

Sorry for the double post this morning - don't know why it did that. It said the first one didn't "publish" so I did it again...

We are back in what, since radiation at least, was one of the shortest anesthetics/surgeries that we have had. Debbie, God-Sent Debbie, came and got Sarah while we were in the waiting room at 7:15 am and brought her back after we were done about 10:30.

Things were a little rough with the anesthesiologist. We did not know him and he did not call last night to talk about Rebekah and what was happening or what we wanted. He was a bit put off by daddy taking care of "his stuff," connecting lines, prepping Rebekah and such. Daddy could see that he was getting short and apologized for "stepping on his job" but daddy also told the doctor that we were going to control as much of Rebekah's treatments as we could. Things went okay. Rebekah went out real well and woke up pretty fast - though extremely grumpy.

Rebekah was so grumpy that there was no consolling her nor changing her out of the hospital jammies so she came home in them. Just another set to add to the collection we guess. She continued to be a bit grumpy for most of the way home and was pretty upset at mommy who gave her the "red" owie medicine (Tylenol) and not the "blue" owie medicine (Morphine). By the time we got most of the way home, however, she had calmed down and was even doing well enough for a short visit at daddy's fire station and then home for a quick tummy tube snack and now off to sleep.

The results. This is good and bad news. The good news is that her vision does not appear to be physically affected by the radiation. Or in other words, there is no apparent damage and all things that they can test for seem to be working correctly. It is not a guarantee that she can see 20/20, but it is a step in the right direction. The tear ducts are a different story. The tumor and then radiation has left a "hole" of atrophied (dead) tissue between her tear ducts out of her eye and her sinuses. It is not that the ducts are "blocked," it is that they are not there. Significant surgery is going to be required to repair/recreate all of these ducts. For now the only "side effect" of this is that she is constantly tearing or crying out of her left eye. As long as that does not start to get infected we will leave the major surgery until other majory surgery in necessary to correct bone/jaw/face defects and/or growth issues. It may sound weird but we are actually grateful that this is "all there is" with regard to this issue.

Continued prayers for side-effect issues and continued cancer free. And while you are reading, head on over to Josh's site (link on the right) and read what his mom, April, wrote yesterday about not respecting cancer. It really affected me.