An update from Melinda

I just spoke with Cheryl and she sounds pretty darn good. It is now the evening of her birthday and all her visitors have left. She sounded a bit tired and she said her blood pressure was up a little, but we assume this is just from the excitement of the day.


THE BIRTHDAY GIRL WRITES (well, speaks!)...

I got a lovely palm tree from Christina in Chicago. When the guy delivered it up to the 10th floor, we couldn't even see him, we just saw the palm tree coming in. He was not a happy camper having to lug this thing up to my room. Because it was my birthday, Mimi and Nathan, my sister Erin, Steve and Don, Jo and Debbie were all here to celebrate. My brother Don came later tonight on his way to work.

Meanwhile, Graie and Robyn sent me the most gorgeous bouquet of flowers, of which I don't remember the name, but they are so exquisite. And, of course, I have enjoyed every birthday card that has come in. The nurses and doctors are just flabbagasted when they come into my room - all the colour, it's like coming in to a mini tropical forest!

Sister Erin bought me a Gund dog (super soft stuffed dog). Mimi's mum and dad bought a gorgeous pair of thick woolly socks and a wool scarf. Jo brought me a new bathrobe. Debbie brought me a book and a DVD (St Elmo's Fire). And Mimi and Nathan have caught me up with all my magazines with my fix of Hollywood gossip. And now we will have to rent a U-Haul to get all this stuff out of here!

So it's all pretty darn wonderful, but of course the best present is that I have come through the surgery with flying colours. Although they had prepared me the night before with a lesson and literature on the colostomy bag, they didn't have to put one in - great news.

So my job now is to heal and get home. And then about a month or so after the surgery date, I will be having an appointment with the BC Cancer Agency, who will then set me up with what kind of chemo I will be needing. Tomorrow, they are going to take me off the morphein pump and I will be doing my pain meds orally.


And more on the operation...

The tumour was enclosed in the mass, the mass itself had come a bit through a micro-perforation in the intestine. There was a pathologist in the OR and from what he could see, all the edges of the mass were clean (meaning there was no leackage). Of course, we won't know until we get the results from pathology if there were in fact any perforations of the mass, but from his eye he said it looked very clean. A very good sign.

The operation was actually four operations in one. (1) The resection of the sigmoid (cut out and sew up the two ends), this one would have been where I would have needed the colostomy bag (not any more!); (2) they found a large abscess attached to my bladder, so they had to take that out, which meant slicing a little bit of the bladder, not much; so the bladder is irritated; (3) the small hernia, which I knew I had before I went in, and they repaired that; (4) and they found a larger hernia that I didn't know about, so they repaired that too!