The Transition from Two to One

So, Mom asked me to be her guest blogger tonight while she is in the hospital.  This will probably be nowhere near as good as her previous blogs, but I'm going to attempt it anyway.  Here goes nothing!

After Mom woke up and battled a case of hiccups for 20 minutes this morning (it took so long because she couldn't drink anything!), we made it to the hospital around 8:45 a.m.  She then got checked in, was given her "hospital jewelry", and taken into a Pre-Op Room.  We waited for 4 hours while Mom got her IV started, followed by her radioactive injection, which would be picked up by the lymph nodes so that they could be examined during surgery.

Around 12:45 p.m the nurse came and wheeled her into Holding.  There, she had to wait forever (or so she says...:) until an anesthesiologist was available, because so many of them were doing epidurals in Labor and Delivery.  To pass the time, we all went and ate in the Cafeteria (my first and last time), came back, and then waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  At about 2:15 we got a call saying that Mom had been been in the OR for around 10 minutes, and that we should be getting another call soon about the lymph nodes status.

It never came.

We waited (anybody else sensing a familiar theme here?) until about 4:15, when there was a knock on our door.  Dr. Martin himself walked in to update us on everything: Mom had minimal bleeding, no complications, etc: a good surgery in general.  The lymph nodes, however, were another story.  During the MRI, a suspicious-looking node was detected.  Out of five lymph nodes that absorbed the radioactive injection, two tested positive for cancer.  Dr. Martin said that as a precaution, he removed other additional nodes under her arm.  He also said that if he had to guess, her cancer would be at Stage 2A.

From that point on, things went pretty smoothly.  Mom woke up from the anesthesia in Recovery with limited nausea, which was fixed right away with some medicine, along with painkillers.  (Her pupils were so small it scared me!)  An hour later, she was transferred to her room for the night.  She threw up a little and felt very dizzy, but it soon passed; when I left around 7:15, she was doing fine.

Since then, Mom has thrown up more and had lots of dry heaves, but is now asleep. We are so appreciative of all the prayers, love, and support that have been received -  Mom is amazed by it every day.  We now pray for her to have a speedy and relatively easy recovery, so that she can be one step closer to winning this battle.  Thank you again for helping us get through today, and hopefully Mom will be able to blog tomorrow night!

TTFN,
-Adelia