THE ADVENTURE GOES ON

                                      THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

      The first day of my husband's chemo ended up being a perfect day. I wish you could have seen us before we left to go to the doctor's office for the appointment which was set for 8:00. Even though I had made a chart, a list, and set all the meds out in order on the cabinet, we were like two ants scurrying around wondering exactly what came next. But he got the right meds taken at the right time.
      His appointment with the oncologist involved the doctor's wife, a pediatric oncology doctor, putting the first two meds into the port and inserting the line into the port which was eventually connected to the 72 hour infusion. The doctor's wife told my husband that she had to quit as a pediatric oncology doctor, couldn't handle the emotional hurts from losing patients.
     An infusion pump kit and med pack were supposed to be delivered within an hour after we got home from the doctor's office where he had received the first two chemo injections. Then we were supposed to call the oncology home health nurse who was supposed to hook the med pack and the pump up to the line in the port. That all worked out, the calls to the right person.
     Everything looked like it was going smoothly until the home health nurse noticed that there was no fanny pack sent to carry the infusion pump and med pack around my husband's waist so that he could be mobile during the 72 hour chemo infusion process. She called the oncology pharmacy supply in Tulsa and told them, and they said one would be sent out immediately.
     After signing all the papers, volumes of them, Michelle, the nurse, started working to hook up the pump and meds to the port. She couldn't get the pump to work properly. She and my husband both worked on it, locking and unlocking both locks over and over again, taking the batteries out over and over again, trying multiple ways to get the pump to work. The same error message kept coming up on the contraption. Michelle called the pharmacy supply in Tulsa again about the pump and the person on the phone coached her on how to get it started, which she already knew.
    They went over and over it as she did what the person told her, with my husband helping as an observer/patient. No luck. So the pharmacy supply in Tulsa said they were locating another pump and bringing it here in 45 minutes. At this point I was glad that I obeyed that inner voice that told me to have lunch for us early. Michelle had already been here approaching an hour.
     While waiting for the pump to be delivered, I mowed the front lawn and left my husband and Michelle to get better acquainted, talking about Weight Watchers and kids, etc. The 45 minutes turned into an hour and a half, but finally two ladies from the pharmacy supply came, apologized over and over again for what we all perceived was a faulty pump. One of the ladies began experimenting with it and found that it had the same error message. She took the batteries out, reprogrammed it, locked and unlocked it and, voila, success. The problem was not the pump. It was very hard, taking a lot of muscle, to turn the lock button all the way around to lock it.
     The ladies apologized over and over for the problem. I kept reiterating that the pump needed some alert written on it saying that it is hard to lock completely and the nurse must really use strength to lock it so she could get it started pumping. They agreed to put a note on the pump for nurses and patients in the future.
     My husband was getting a little tired by this time, but the ladies wanted to ask him about the cancer, his operation, etc. Ah, ha, now I was beginning to perceive the reason for the delay. My husband told them highlights, then he told about the surgeon saving his life. I jumped in the conversation (smelly as I was and still in my lawn mowing clothes) and told them about the miracle of the surgeon ordering the CT scan which showed the areas of cancer, about the surgeries, etc., thus saving my husband's life. We told them all about the surgeon telling me about the remembrance of his professor in med school who was athletic like my husband but found out in a CT scan he had liver cancer. So we told them how that memory crossed the surgeon's mind when he palpated my husband's hernia and the nodule in the groin area, and that that was what led him to order the CT scan.
     One lady quickly said, "I know who gave him that thought." I told her that I do, too. They both were thrilled by the story, saying it was a true miracle over and over again.
      I followed the two pharmacy ladies to their car while Michelle successfully hooked Steve up.
      Both ladies raved about the miracle, so I filled them in about the surgeon sending the path report back for a second testing after the path doctor said no malignancy was found. They gasped when I told them that the surgeon instructed the lab on the second testing to test for the most rare cancers because the tumors looked too funky to be benign. I told them the path report came back saying that the cancer, in fact, is a rare kind that only 200 people a year have. I then told them that MD Anderson confirmed it in their path report.         
       The ladies were thrilled again.  Both women asked if we minded if they tell that testimony. They needed our permission because of the nurse/patient confidentiality. I gave my permission, telling them that my husband had told a Tulsa lawyer the same story the day before when the lawyer called to see how my husband was doing. The lawyer had also asked my husband if he could tell the miracle story, to which my husband gave his wholehearted permission.
     One of the ladies said it sounds like they are all going to cover Tulsa with the miracle story. They left blabbering and jabbering about the miracle.
So, all things work together for good.
     After telling some of the miracle story, my husband was rejuvenated when the pharmacy ladies and Michelle left.
     It seems to me that the pump problem was an act of God so that the women could hear the story of the miracles. The two pharmacy ladies left walking on a cloud after hearing about God's miracles in this adventure.
     The wait was worth it! The patient certainly was not injured by it, although he told me that first day of chemo seemed like it was a week long with so many things going on.
     God doesn't toot His own horn, but we can certainly toot our horns for Him. It's called praise. When we tell others about God's miracles, it's like tooting a horn. It's kind of like having a parade for Him because He is so good.
     I'll join a parade for him every time.

GOD WHISPERS IN OUR THOUGHTS

GOD WHISPERS IN OUR THOUGHTS

     Major surgery was scheduled to be performed on my husband on July 12th, 2010. In fact, it was the second one in a two month period. Events leading up to that particular surgery were filled with God-incidences, not the coincidences that strange events are often called.

     A hernia in his left abdominal area was noticed by my husband in February, many months before the first surgery of June 9th. Also a strange hard nodule had appeared in his left groin area. His urologist in a large city advised not to have anything done about them unless they started being a bother to him because they were not serious. That seemed like good news. Little did we know what was going on inside my husband's body.

     The area around the nodule did become bothersome, so my husband asked his primary care doctor at his yearly checkup if he should have it checked further. That doctor set up an appointment with a surgeon for a consult, just in case the hernia needed to be repaired immediately.
     I went to the appointment with my husband at the surgeon's office. After my husband told the surgeon about the history of the two bothersome areas, the surgeon said he needed to palpate the two areas, which he did. It took all of two minutes.

     The surgeon commented, "I'm setting you up for an appointment for a CT scan in the morning. Is that convenient?"

     That was shocking news since we had been led to believe that the two areas were not any problem unless they became painful.

     At the followup meeting with the surgeon after the CT scan we heard more shocking news, that being that my husband had a nonfunctioning kidney and he needed to have surgery to remove a tumor on his testicle, as well as the hernia repaired. The surgeon said my husband needed to see a urologist and suggested a particular one for whom he had great respect.

     After an informative meeting with the urologist, the first surgery was scheduled. That surgery resulted in repairing the hernia and removing the left testicle because of the presence of a carcinoma. More surgery was scheduled later to remove the left kidney, the ureter tube leading from the kidney to the bladder and any other suspicious looking lesions.

     During the second surgery on July 12th, which was anticipated to take an hour and a half, well into the third hour a nurse came to the surgery waiting room, called me into a conference room and said the urologist who was assisting the surgeon wanted to talk to me. They had discovered multiple cancers in the left abdominal area.

     I was expecting to hear that the surgery was over, but the urologist came into the room with perspiration pouring from his forehead and began our conversation by asking me if I knew why the surgeon ordered a CT scan at the initial exam. I was clueless. The urologist said he was just curious.

     Then he proceeded to tell me that he had removed the cancerous kidney, the ureter and its large tumor, also a small part of the bladder. He said he had also removed multiple tumors from the adrenal gland and multiple tumors from the abdominal area. He asked again if I had any idea why the surgeon had initially ordered the CT scan after just a routine palpation of the hernia and the nodule. I became curious also.
     Then the urologist told me that he had to return to surgery since the surgeon was probably finished with his exploratory exam of the affected area. He informed me that the surgeon would be out of surgery to consult with me in a few hours.

     I was shocked at the extent of the cancer, but the urologist assured me that he and the surgeon had done a thorough job of removing all of the cancer; that, in fact, the surgeon was also removing a portion of the bowel because of a tumor on it.

     After another few hours the surgeon came to the surgery waiting room, sat down beside me and told me in detail everything he had done in the extensive surgery, telling me that the "mother" of the cancer seemed to be in the spermatic cord, which he had removed.

     I took the bull by the horns and asked the surgeon the same question the urologist had asked me, why did he order a CT scan at the first office visit?

     The surgeon began telling me his reasoning. He said that when he palpated the two areas at the initial exam that a thought came to his mind about his favorite professor in medical school, one who taught oncology. The surgeon commented that the professor was a tall, athletic, robust man like my husband. He related that the professor began to feel listless and weak, so he ordered a CT scan which showed that he had multiple cancers in his liver. The quick remembrance of that professor is what led my husband's surgeon to order the CT scan rather than just passing off the two areas of concern as normal problems for a man the age of my husband.
     The act of ordering the CT scan saved my husband's life. It showed the areas of major concern, the nonfunctioning kidney, the blocked ureter and the tumor on the testicle.

     I know for a fact that God is the one who whispered the memory about the professor in the mind of the surgeon. Then the surgeon acted upon the suggestive thought that my husband's problems might be more extensive than it seemed. Indeed they were.

     If the CT scan had not been ordered, the cancers would have grown until it was too late for my husband to recover from any treatment.

     As it turned out, my husband recovered from the extensive surgery quickly. Both doctors referred to my husband as amazing, a marvel and the strongest man they've ever seen because of his rapid recovery.
     The pathology report identified the type of cancer as a rare sarcoma of which only two hundred people are diagnosed a year. The surgeon ordered a consult with MD Anderson doctors. The oncologist at that hospital recommended traditional strong chemotherapy, no radiation, and said that the chemo will cure any remaining small cancers. Then he told my husband that he will not die of cancer.

     We know that the conclusion would have been different and it would have been devastating if the CT scan had not been ordered by the surgeon. It was the first step toward saving my husband's life. The second step was the extensive surgery performed by the urologist and the surgeon, being cautious to remove all visible tumors. The third step is coming up, which will be chemotherapy. The chemo which will do the final sweep of killing any remaining microscopic tumors.

     My husband owes his life to God's divine intervention in the matter. God whispered the memory of the professor into the mind of the surgeon. The two doctors assisted in saving his life with their diligence.

     Thank you God for your wise whisperings in the mind of the surgeon.

     Thank you Dr. Robison and Dr. Daniels for taking the time to remove all the tumors, thus saving the life of my husband.

     We can even thank the chemotherapy for being the final gift of God in completing the life saving activities.