3/12/2008

Surgery update #2

This was an email from Merci and I don't think she will mind me posting this here because we have seen the power of prayer...here are some things to pray about and again THANK YOU for praying!!
*******************
This is a really fast update - dad made it fine through the night though it was a ROUGH night and he pulled out his arterial line and his central line and that was a problem. It's fixed now and they've done an MRI on him today, don't know the results of that yet. Minor complications include: numbness in his right hand and it keeps going to sleep and he's having some speech issues - slurring some, and using the wrong word when he wants to say something.

Mom and I came home for a shower and a little sleep and I'm heading back to the hospital now.

I just got a call - we've had our first MAJOR complication. They have done a swallow study to see why he's having trouble swallowing and the results are not good. Whatever pills and water he has swallowed overnight have NOT gone into his stomach but into his lungs which is of course, very dangerous. They have just inserted a feeding tube into his nose so he can get nutrition and water and possibly some medicine but so far, even the feeding tube isn't getting liquids into his stomach. This is obviously a major setback and very scary, but God has been faithful this far. Please just continue to pray that this too will be resolved safely and my Dad will continue his recovery, however slowly. We are just grateful to have him still with us today and we know that we saw God work a miracle yesterday.

The surgery update from yesterday was that they removed 80-90 percent of the brain tumor and will get the rest with gamma knife radiation later. The miracle is that the tumor appears to be BENIGN. It is called a Schwanoma tumor and is a very rare - as in less than 5% of all brain tumors - typically benign tumor. We'll have final pathology results in approx. 5-7 days. Thank you all for praying! Please don't stop. Prayer truly does change things and I saw that again up close and personally yesterday. I am grateful for all the prayer, love, encouragement and support. You cannot imagine how it has encouraged my family. All our love to all of you!

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Praying, praying, praying~