(no subject)
First, I'd like to thank everyone who has been saying prayers for my mom, and thanks for your encouragement, I appreciate it.
Mom did good coming through her surgery, that's the good news.
The bad news is that once the surgeons had her opened up they found a few more problems than originally anticipated. In addition to the hysterectomy they found additional tumors on her large intestine. As a result they had to remove a large portion of her large intestine. The most troublesome one was behind her uterus just above her sigmoid colon (the section of colon before the anus) which means her ostomy will be permanant.
The surgeons mentioned that the ovarian cancer appeared to be stage 3 which is very bad, quite advanced. Apparently there is no reliable test for detecting ovarian cancer. Which makes sense considering my mom is anal about her yearly exams. In fact the week before her surgery she had her yearly mammogram. Talk about adding insult to injury. Already bloated to the point of looking seven months pregnant, in an extreme amount of pain and then having to go have your tits mashed flat like pancakes.
Needless to say it has been a very long, emotional weekend.
We haven't said anything to mom about what the surgeons told us on Friday. She was very much out of it the rest of Friday and even on Saturday she was in and out of it at times. The one piece of humor that I can find out of all of this is for once I wasn't the one saying silly things while coming out of anesthesia. About an hour after mom got to her room my dad, mom's friend Tammy and I were in her room talking when one of us commented on how small the room was. Mom open her eyes, looked around and said, "They put me in a broom closet."
That had me in stitches for quite a while because it was funny but also she had that lovely doped up tone that is so much fun as you are waking up.
Saturday she was more coherent and by Sunday she was doing better but still in a great amount of pain. Got to love those pain pumps, unfortunately no matter how often you press that little button it stubbornly sticks to its programming. She has an NG tube that will remain in until she starts passing gas which means the bowels have woken up, the anesthesia paralysis the bowels for some time, especially considering the abuse they took during the surgery. She does not like the NG tube at all; in fact I thought she was going to pull the darn thing out yesterday.
The kids did all get to go see her yesterday, the twins went in with dad and spent most of the day there with him. I took the younger two in after lunch. It was hard preparing them for seeing her. I didn't want them to freak out seeing grandma looking so pale and with a IV, NG tube, and catheter; mom wouldn't walk out to the mailbox without hair done and makeup on normally so this would be quite different.
They were up there for an hour and a half and behaved very well. Makaila who probably remembers more from when my grandma was ill was visibly upset and told mom she didn't want her to die. Bless mom, she laughed and told Makaila that she probably wasn't going to die she just felt like it.
The kids wanted to get her flowers and ballons so when I got groceries on Saturday I picked up a Mini Roses plant. Unfortunately it was only 5 degrees on Saturday and I think the walk out to the truck shocked the plant. On Sunday morning all the flowers had shrivelled up, I wasn't going to take that to mom. So we stopped to looked for something for mom before going to see her. I prefer to give plants over flowers because they continue to live but we couldn't find a plant that I liked that she didn't already have, which was very disappointing. Looking around Makaila found the stuffed animals and we found the cutest, softest stuffed horse. Since we are into horses we decided to forgo the plant and got that instead. Mom loved it!!
When we left yesterday, after careful hugs and kisses, mom was still holding the horse when we left. So the kids were pleased with how much she like their gift, even though Matt swore grandma would have liked the semi-truck he found a whole lot better....boys.
Hopefully we will hear something soon but dad was unsure if the oncologist would visit mom in the hospital or if they would talk with him at her next scheduled appointment. I would hope considering the little surprise they found that he would put in an appearance and give us an idea of what they think is going on. I would like to know exactly what stage the cancer was and what her prognosis is.
The kids have today off of school for President's day so I will be catching up on housework, email, live journal and updates. If I'm lucky the kids will go play at friends this afternoon and I can get some writing done. I did get a little something written last week and its being cleaned up and beta'd, in fact I saw something in email so it may be done. Sorry its not an update for Telling Draco but it is something completed which I've been wondering if I was capable of doing again. As soon as I discover what the crash I just heard in the basement was I will be looking.
Thanks again everyone for your prayers.
Mom did good coming through her surgery, that's the good news.
The bad news is that once the surgeons had her opened up they found a few more problems than originally anticipated. In addition to the hysterectomy they found additional tumors on her large intestine. As a result they had to remove a large portion of her large intestine. The most troublesome one was behind her uterus just above her sigmoid colon (the section of colon before the anus) which means her ostomy will be permanant.
The surgeons mentioned that the ovarian cancer appeared to be stage 3 which is very bad, quite advanced. Apparently there is no reliable test for detecting ovarian cancer. Which makes sense considering my mom is anal about her yearly exams. In fact the week before her surgery she had her yearly mammogram. Talk about adding insult to injury. Already bloated to the point of looking seven months pregnant, in an extreme amount of pain and then having to go have your tits mashed flat like pancakes.
Needless to say it has been a very long, emotional weekend.
We haven't said anything to mom about what the surgeons told us on Friday. She was very much out of it the rest of Friday and even on Saturday she was in and out of it at times. The one piece of humor that I can find out of all of this is for once I wasn't the one saying silly things while coming out of anesthesia. About an hour after mom got to her room my dad, mom's friend Tammy and I were in her room talking when one of us commented on how small the room was. Mom open her eyes, looked around and said, "They put me in a broom closet."
That had me in stitches for quite a while because it was funny but also she had that lovely doped up tone that is so much fun as you are waking up.
Saturday she was more coherent and by Sunday she was doing better but still in a great amount of pain. Got to love those pain pumps, unfortunately no matter how often you press that little button it stubbornly sticks to its programming. She has an NG tube that will remain in until she starts passing gas which means the bowels have woken up, the anesthesia paralysis the bowels for some time, especially considering the abuse they took during the surgery. She does not like the NG tube at all; in fact I thought she was going to pull the darn thing out yesterday.
The kids did all get to go see her yesterday, the twins went in with dad and spent most of the day there with him. I took the younger two in after lunch. It was hard preparing them for seeing her. I didn't want them to freak out seeing grandma looking so pale and with a IV, NG tube, and catheter; mom wouldn't walk out to the mailbox without hair done and makeup on normally so this would be quite different.
They were up there for an hour and a half and behaved very well. Makaila who probably remembers more from when my grandma was ill was visibly upset and told mom she didn't want her to die. Bless mom, she laughed and told Makaila that she probably wasn't going to die she just felt like it.
The kids wanted to get her flowers and ballons so when I got groceries on Saturday I picked up a Mini Roses plant. Unfortunately it was only 5 degrees on Saturday and I think the walk out to the truck shocked the plant. On Sunday morning all the flowers had shrivelled up, I wasn't going to take that to mom. So we stopped to looked for something for mom before going to see her. I prefer to give plants over flowers because they continue to live but we couldn't find a plant that I liked that she didn't already have, which was very disappointing. Looking around Makaila found the stuffed animals and we found the cutest, softest stuffed horse. Since we are into horses we decided to forgo the plant and got that instead. Mom loved it!!
When we left yesterday, after careful hugs and kisses, mom was still holding the horse when we left. So the kids were pleased with how much she like their gift, even though Matt swore grandma would have liked the semi-truck he found a whole lot better....boys.
Hopefully we will hear something soon but dad was unsure if the oncologist would visit mom in the hospital or if they would talk with him at her next scheduled appointment. I would hope considering the little surprise they found that he would put in an appearance and give us an idea of what they think is going on. I would like to know exactly what stage the cancer was and what her prognosis is.
The kids have today off of school for President's day so I will be catching up on housework, email, live journal and updates. If I'm lucky the kids will go play at friends this afternoon and I can get some writing done. I did get a little something written last week and its being cleaned up and beta'd, in fact I saw something in email so it may be done. Sorry its not an update for Telling Draco but it is something completed which I've been wondering if I was capable of doing again. As soon as I discover what the crash I just heard in the basement was I will be looking.
Thanks again everyone for your prayers.