Surgery Results

Thank you all for your steadfast prayers, as many of them were answered!

Cherie made it wonderfully through 4 hours of surgery. The doctor was able to reconnect the colon after removing the tumor. So no colostomy bag and no ileostomy bag! Going into surgery having a bag afterwards was an expectation. The surgery was lengthy, mostly because the tumor was joined to the spleen. It took him a long time to pull the tumor off without doing any damage. There was no unusual blood loss and she is stable, currently in the recovery room.

Without having a report on the biopsy yet, he did indicate that it looks as if it's malignant. The lymph nodes in the area looked enlarged and hard. He did not see any sign of the malignancy on the liver. He said mostly likely there will be chemo, but no radiation.

These next 2 days are important. If there will be any leakage it's usually within the first couple of days. He is going to hold off on giving her any liquids for a couple of days. She can have ice chips and throat lozenges.

The surgeon feels really good about the surgery. We are thankful God chose this man when He created him to bring honor and glory to Him through the use of his hands (and robotics) to operate on my sister today!

My guess is that, when all the anesthesia has worn off, Cherie will wake up as her normal, cheery self. And she will be relieved that she didn't wake up with a bag (no pun intended, well maybe it was)!

Someone named Amy Burton just brought a wonderful meal to the waiting room! We are going to eat it in jubilation and thankfulness for God's continued faithfulness as we wait for Cherie to get out of the recovery room. I will update more later, but I'm hungry now.