Surgical Success and other Scintillaing Stories

Chris's surgery went quite well yesterday and we would like to thank all of you for your prayers ... they were much appreciated and deeply felt.

As Chris is still recovering from her general anesthesia, she is allowing me (Dave) the privilege of posting on her blog. I imagine that the privilege is quite temporary as she will probably be posting later today.

As for details of the surgery, our day started quite early as we had to be at the radiology department at the hospital at 7:30 am. Chris then had a stereotactic MRI to place a wire in her breast to precisely mark the tumor site. This is a brand new machine at the hospital and Chris was the first patient to use it. The technicians were actually excited to see Chris and try out their new machine. The technicians were more than up for the task and the MRI wen well. Then Chris was given an injection of a radioactive tracer (for those who want to know, it was Technetium-99m, which has a half-life = 6.01 hrs and a gamma ray energy of 140 KeV). The tracer was injected to determine the drainage patterns in her breast. She then had lymphoscintigraphy (sentinel node mapping) of her breast every 30 minutes until 11:00 am to record the movement of the Tc-99m in her breast.

AT 11 Chris was taken up to the surgery floor, only to be told that there was an emergency surgery that was going to delay her surgery an hour or so. It turned out to be the "or so...". Chris went into to surgery at 2:30 pm. However, thanks to the presence of family and dear friends (allowed to visit during the wait,) the time went quickly. After Chris was wheeled off to surgery, we settled into prayer ... only to have the surgeon walk in the room ... my heart started to race, and then the surgeon siad ... "Have you seen Chris' films?" I laughed and told him that I last saw them down in radiology and he quickly left the room.

The surgeon returned at 3:45 to say that the surgery had gone extremely well. He had removed the tumor (lumpectomy) and biopsied the sentinel node which came out negative. He wasn't sure about the nodes in her chest and abdomen, but that they would discuss her case at the Tumor Board on Wednesday.

We were able to go home at around 6 pm and Chris was able to rest comfortably most of the evening. She was able to sleep off and on during the night and is feeling much better this morning.

The highlight of our evening last night was a call from Tim saying that he and his teammates finally had a good race and he was able to run a provisional qualifying time (30:38 for 10k). He was thrilled, Chris was thrilled and I was thrilled ... I think you get the pattern!

How great and awesome is our God! He is so gracious to answer our prayers in such a positive way.

I need to go make breakfast, so I will close out my first post. Thank you again for you prayers and for your emails, letters, cards, etc.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow ...

Dave