Post Op

The day kicked off way too early after a long day and no sleep.  

Shelbie had awesome nurses as usual.  We were calm but anxious to see our surgeon and get the final word on the PET scan from Friday.  He came in after all the other check in stuff was done and his first words to us left my heart in the bottom of my gut. 

"Getting a PET scan was the best decision and there's no doubt that surgery has to happen. However..."

And then, he pulled up the PET scan.  The large red spot is an extremely "HOT" hypermetabolic enlarged lymph node.  That has been the target everyone is uptight about.  You can see, it is pressing up against a major artery and deep in her abdominal cavity with lots of important things in the way.  It was perfect in every way to biopsy because it is so large and so much activity that, by all standards indicates cancer.  Regular, normal lymph nodes do not show like this on a PET scan. Picture red spots like that all over her body- several in her lungs, heart, aorta, ovary, just to name a few. 

Just above that large red spot is a smaller red spot, shown with an arrow.  It is smaller and not as deep.  This is a new tumor that didn't show up on the CT scan two weeks ago, or the PET scan 3 months ago!  This ups the ante on things but the good news is, that we decided to take out that one, instead of the original one they had selected.  It made everything easier!  The incision isn't as big, he had to go deep but not as deep and it wasn't near any major arteries! 

 I needed to see this this morning.  I've questioned my ability to feel the spirit as of late.  I'm just so tired of life and exhausted and everything feels hard.  If I had not have spoken up last week and insisted on another PET scan before committing, they wouldn't have found all these new issues and Shelbie would have gone through a much harder procedure.

Once he had her opened up, he found another very large growth, beside this new one so he removed that as well, along with a lot of surrounding tissue.   The second one was between the size of a grape and a golf  ball.   The smaller one shown above, with the arrow, was just larger than a large grape.

Our surgeon took some extra measures to have radiology pin point the exact place where he needed to go and that meant he didn't have to dig around for it.  The surgery went well, all things considered.
It's been a little unnerving as different specialties have seen the most recent scans, a few people have already started 'staging' her 'cancer'.   I don't understand that.  I don't understand if they already know for certain and they won't share that with us until Pathology weighs in, or if they are just making early assumptions.  At any rate, in my effort to remain open to without judgement, it's messing with my head.

 The obligatory pictures while we wait and as they wheel her away.

Right after they kicked me out of pre-op, I went up to the library to see if there were any CVID or Lymphoma trials available that we could look at as treatment options.  That was a huge mistake.  I walked in and couldn't hold back the tears.  I sat down at a computer and hid my face in the corner until I could collect myself then hurried out of there.

On the elevator back down to the surgical waiting room, I rode with Ben Tanner, the Executive Director of Huntsman.  I worked with him on the Huntsman Satellite clinic back home that I designed.  He gave us some special attention when Shelbie was admitted two years ago with her last biopsy.  He actually remembered me.  It was weird that two years later, we cross paths again, under similar circumstances.  Anyways, visiting with him allowed me to get my head back in the game and distract me during the wait.

Otherwise, this was my view for the morning with about 30 of my new closest friends.

Insurance denied an overnight stay but they want us to stick around for a couple of days so we are in a hotel.  Tomorrow, we will meet with lung doctors to determine what to do with her lung diffusion problems due to all the granulomas, AVM's and scarring in her lungs.   Pathology will be back in 4-5 days.

I'm really trying not to give meaning and judgement to anything and just wait until we have the facts and just let it unfold on God's terms. That's not easy!!  It would be easy however, to go straight to cancer in my head, and quite honestly by all standards, this looks like cancer. Cancer is the easy answer in this situation.  Advancing Granuloma disease is not a good scenario...but we will wait. It will be a messy wait, requiring lots of energy.

The take away today is that we are so blessed with the way things went.  We were lead along by a loving Heavenly Father, without a doubt.