April 11, 2006
HI everyone.
Hannah is doing wonderfully. Becky and I had the opportunity to bring her home yesterday afternoon (Monday). This capped a 7 day period where Hannah underwent significant surgery and a variety of post surgical challenges (details below). The important thing is that Hannah is well, in great spirits, as always, and is recouperating in order to restart her chemo treatments (scheduled for Monday the 17th).
The surgery consisted of the removal of the upper lobe, left lung. The limited amount of material removed was at the high end of the expectations of success. This level of success was accomplished due to the exceptional efforts of the surgeon. He was able to cut away an elongated section of the pulmonary artery that was exposed to the cancer. FYI, the pulmonary artery transits oxygen depleted blood from the heart into the lung. With careful cutting and stitching, the saving of this artery allowed Hannah to keep the remainder of the left lung. This is very, very good news.
Post op provided a variety of challenges that Hannah, the nurses and doctors had to deal with. Those challenges were recurring high fevers, very low blood pressure (as low as 66 over 33), declining white blood cell counts, uncontrolable shaking, and vomiting anything that went down. On Monday, Hannah entered the surgery battling a fever. Although the doctors checked her out no cause was found so on with the surgery. On Tuesday Hannah started displaying the symptoms that were previously described. Due to the severity of the symptoms the “Doctor Detective” work began. After many consultations, questions, poking, more questions, additional Doctors, additional questions and a large series of swab tests, she was diagnosed on Thursday with influenza B (the flu). Well, Let me tell you, - - Cancer Hospital / very sick children / very contagious virous equals Hannah being held in isolation. Masks, protective gowns and rubber gloves on and off every time you enter or leave the room. Do you know how much your hands sweat inside rubber gloves? Yuk. All the precautions however are absolutely necessary and we all did our best to follow the rules. I believe that Friday was the low point of Hannah’s stay in post op. The accumulative effects of all the symptoms and dealing with the pain/discomfort of the surgical procedure just snowballed into a day where we were all very concerned. I am voting that we should allowed that day to gently, but quickly, pass from our thoughts.
About Hannah. Just to give you an idea of how zapped our little princess was during this time frame, I was trying to do my “Dad thing”. You know, the stuff where Dad’s kinda tease the little ones. The desired results would be to get that little eye roll that girls develop somewhere between the time frame of “Dad your so great & Dad your so lame”. Well, with all my highly developed Dad skills, all I was able to get was a “stare”. No eye roll, no smile, no “stop Daddy”. Just a stare. Wow, I really got concerned at that point. On Sunday, late morning, at approximately 11:23.47 AM, after continuous efforts on my part, I got my first eye roll. Oh how I was delighted to see that. I instantly knew that everything was going to be alright after that.
I want to give thanx to all the nurses and doctors at Sloan. Thanx to all of you who have prayed, called, given your time to our family or just being there if we did need special help. During a tough time where we are distracted from everyday life, it is comforting to know that there are many standing beside us to help and support when needed.
And thank you to Nathan, Colin and Austin. Mom and I love you and appreciate your understanding during the past week. Thanks to Uncle Jimmy and Pastor Mau who sat with us during the surgery. Last but not least, Thank you to Hannah. We love you very much and want you to get better soon.