I'm back.....

Yup, I'm back....back home and back here at my little blog.  It's funny.  Emory had wireless in the patient room and a couple of times I tried to write a post but I just had no words. 

Judi is doing well although it's going to be a long haul.  This was incredibly major surgery.  Jud's friend Gina (an AMAZING woman) did a good job of describing everything in her email to friends:

We reported to Emory at 7:30; Judi was taken topre-op at 9:15; the surgery began at 11:45 and ended at 5:15.  Asplanned, Dr. Kooby removed the gall bladder, the duodenum, the bile duct, andsmall parts of the liver, stomach and pancreas.  Two things occured whichwere not planned.  First, the doctor spotted a suspicious area of tissuebehind the bile duct and immediately sent a sample for biopsy.  It cameback identified as fibrous tissue, not cancer--good news.  Then hediscovered that the mass he had planned to remove had grown into a vein leadingto the liver and into a bit of the stomach.  The stomach was not a problemsince he was already removing a part of it.  The vein was a problem, so hedid a vein resection effectively removing the affected part of the vein. This was the primary reason that the surgery went 2-3 hours beyond the normaltime for this procedure.

 

She was given a bit of a transfusion not so muchbecause she lost blood during the procedure but as a precaution due toexpected seeping of blood at the vein resection site.  Dr. Kooby feels verygood about the specimen removal and told us afterwards that the margins ofremoved areas look clean.  He said he was very aggressive with her surgerybecause he wants her to live a long life.  Even though the doctor felt certain last Friday that this was bile ductcancer, he said today that when he got in there, he actually couldn't tell if itwas bile duct or pancreatic.  The biopsies will tell us that for certain,but we will not have those results for about a week.

Judi is doing well although struggling with debilitating nausea and of course pain.  It was terribly hard to leave her.  Terribly hard.

My dearest friend Eileen is there with her now.  She had told both Judi and me that she could come out if we needed her so when my sister Debbie had problems arranging to get off work I was feeling a bit frantic.  I emailed Eileen and said, "can you come?"  And she did.  She just immediately said yes, she would come and booked her flight and hotel and said she was so glad she could be there.....  I can't tell you what it feels like to have someone that you can ask without hesitation and someone who is just there for you....  It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.  We overlapped a bit too and Judi sent us back to the hotel early so we splurged and went out and had a wonderful dinner (I think I'll have a separate food post....).

So I'm back home and utterly exhausted.  I ache everywhere.  I ache when I get tired.  Ernie thinks this is odd.  He says he just gets tired when he's tired.  Huh?

Anyway.  I was back early enough to take my mother to her doctor's appointment but the thought of it made me want to cry so Ernie assured me he would take her as planned.  Back to work tomorrow and Ernie goes out of town on Thursday and I have to work Friday evening and all day Saturday and still need to figure out what I'm going to do with the guys. 

I took my camera but took very few pictures. 

Emory was impressive.  For some reason I didn't expect the hospital to be smack dab in the middle of campus but it was.  The campus is lovely and actually, so is the hospital....

not your typical hospital lobby:

Judi and Gina in the waiting room before surgery----Judi looks pretty good for someone with no make up and tons of stress waiting to go into pre-op, doesn't she?

Gina, an organizational mastermind, with her "Judi book."  She takes notes in this and keeps track of contacts, offers of help, etc.  As I said, she is amazing....

I'm glad to be home but I miss Judi.