A Spring of Joy

Angie asked me to post a quick update to let you all know where we are today. Her’s would have been a captivating story, thrilling and entertaining you with the highlights of our week in the hospital and leaving you both laughing and crying at the end…

But you get me.

By all accounts surgery went very well on Monday, the Doc assured me that she “held still and didn’t try to help or anything.” We were expecting to get pathology results sometime after Wednesday afternoon, but in one of the many wonderful perks of a ‘small-town’ hospital they actually showed up Tuesday afternoon. Dr. B. brought the pathology summary to our room and dropped it in Angie’s lap, with the relevant bits highlighted.

No lymph nodes. No spread.

They caught this one early and took care of business. This made Tuesday a very good day, and we had some reason to hope that when we go see the Oncologist on August 10th she’d tell us that Chemotherapy wasn’t necessary.

Wednesday morning our Oncologist dropped by the room. Dr. B had given her the good news, and rather than making us wait for 2 weeks while she was on vacation she came right up to tell her news– NO CHEMO.

Wednesday was also a very good day.

So today we are still in the hospital, but we know that from here out all Angie has to worry about is recovering from surgery. There won’t be any further treatment for her colon cancer. She adds another annual test to her bank of lifetime prevention, but she is once again to our knowledge completely cancer free.

She is still in a good bit of pain, and the surgeon on-call who stopped in to see her this morning warned her that this is probably the worst day in that sense. It’s pretty clear at this point we have at least one more day in here. Yesterday she graduated from 1/2 cup of clear liquid every 8 hours to unrestricted clear liquids. That meant instead of subsisting entirely on ice chips she was brought chicken broth for breakfast, beef broth for lunch and vegetable broth for supper. Variety is, after all, the spice of life.

Lunch today was particularly exciting- we found out she’s no longer on the clear liquid restriction. Pureed chicken noodle soup is every bit as gross looking as it sounds, incidentally) She is able to have coffee with cream and sugar now though, so all is not lost!

One of the more entertaining parts about the week has been the effects of her pain meds. In addition to the self-administered morphine pump she’s been getting a range of other drugs, including narcotics for pain. She has been having lovely conversations with people who aren’t here, drifting in and out of sleep in the middle of conversations, having conversations with me in her head that she things are out loud…

The other night when a friend asked her how the kids were doing, she started telling her about the trip we took to Saint Louis– 2 years ago.

She’s been able to get plenty of rest and is really looking a lot better today. Reading is still very difficult for her, and she’s not able to concentrate well enough to type or write. That should improve as they wean her off some of the drugs. We are just incredibly thankful to be riding out the week knowing that this is chapter is closed, and not anticipating more treatment.

Incredibly thankful.

So, thank you all for your prayers, for the calls and visits and notes and comments, and hopefully the next post will be from your regularly scheduled host!