Jan's Status

Seriously though…..

Jan is in the hospital, but she is recovering nicely. She went in on Tuesday of this week because she was in quite a bit of pain, and the Doctor (Johnny Howton, who’s wife teaches the College Freshman SS class at CABC), decided that she needed to have the mass in her colon looked at with a CT scan.

To back up a bit, she, through a recent colonoscopy, found out several weeks ago that there was a mass in her ascending colon, that would have to be removed, and surgery was scheduled for September.

The pain turned out to be that area that was bothering her, because that portion of the colon was causing problems. (A lot of technical terms were used, that sounded like yada yada, let’s take it out now.) So she went in and they decided to perform the surgery on Thursday.

Surgery was scheduled for 3, so they came and got her from the room at 3:20, and started the surgery at 5:00. If this does not make sense to you, then you do not work at the hospital. In medical parlance “scheduled time” is a term that is loosely defined as “a number between one and twelve that bears no relation to actual time factors”. We received hourly updates, and she emerged from surgery at 9 and was back in the room at 10. All went well, the mass was removed, and was pretty much as routine as this procedure can be.

The Doctor said that the mass was harder than he would have liked, which indicates an increased probability of cancer cells being present, but that it had not penetrated the colon lining, which indicates that if there are cancer cells, there is a greater likelihood that they have not spread outside of that area. We should know more about that on Tuesday when pathology reports are made.

Thanks for your prayers so far, and keep it up as we wait for the results, and Jan continues the recovery process.

I told her that she needed to hurry up and get home, because the kitchen sink is almost completely full of dishes, and I am not sure where we will put the dirty plates if something doesn’t happen soon.