Cancer must be catching

Just a few empty seats

It has been a little over a week since my last post here.  I really should have written sooner  It was a wonderful week.  I am learning through personal experience more about this chemo business.  Hitting your "low" is no fun and feeling good thereafter is amazing.  Boy it brings that "opposition in all things" scripture to life in a very real way.  

Last week JoLynne and I traveled back to Minnesota again for follow up visits with the surgeons.  Mayo clinic will always be a place of miracles to me.  The surgeons were delighted to see how I was progressing.  As we visited with one of the surgeons, an LDS man, he said, "You know, I can always tell when we operate on someone who is being prayed for.  Things just go differently in the operating room."    He then told us that a number of such miracles occurred during my surgery.  I think we are aware of many of them but he told us something that we hadn't heard.

Apparently, when the tumor was removed it was given to the pathologists who were in the operating room.  While they began their initial analysis, the surgeons proceeded to take out borders around the tumor to make sure that the cancer hadn't spread into adjacent tissue.    After a bit, the pathologists announced that my tumor was benign.  (They changed their mind later, as you may remember).  Our surgeon told us that the normal protocol at that point would be to discard the borders that had been harvested.  It makes no sense to analyze the borders of a benign tumor.  He said that they were about to throw them in the garbage can when one of the surgeons said, "I just don't feel good about that.  I think we need to have the border evaluated still.  Send them to pathology."  They proceeded to send them to pathology and, as you know the tumor later proved to be malignant.  The borders that were sent and reviewed were all clean.  If they had not analyzed the borders they would have had no way of knowing that it hadn't spread and I would have had to go through radiation therapy as a precaution.  It would have made my recovery much more complicated.  So, for those of you who have been kind enough to pray for us through this challenge, THANK YOU AGAIN! Prayer really makes a difference!

Our trip home was also good.  We had a little extra space on the airplane, as you can see.  My guess is that there are rumors going around that cancer is contagious.  With those kind of rumors we may have trouble getting plane tickets in the future if the airline industry sees a pattern.

Well,  on Wednesday I began another series of chemotherapy.  I felt well enough today to go into to office.  I was grateful.  I was able to provide some services to some of my sweet patients.  We will see what tomorrow brings.  "One day at a time"; that is my motto these days.