Discharged

The hospital discharged John at about 2pm this afternoon! Praise the Lord! He was doing so well that they decided to let him go early after removing his drain and his IV this morning. The PA changed the dressing on his arm, and told him we were free to go! They might even let him do his follow up appointment closer to home. That will be a blessing too!

We are just staying at the hotel relaxing right now. We hope to go eat at the hotel restaurant tonight, get a good night of sleep, and head home tomorrow!

Mommy or Jocelyn

Well, for those of you that are getting tired of the constant updates, I don't think much will change with John's condition in the next 24 hours. He does hope to get off of the IV in the morning, and he's started taking pain pills (which seem to be working really well) rather than using the pump (which is the goal). So all is well. He's sleeping right now. I was hungry, and not interested in basketball, so I decided to go down to the cafe to eat and check email.

As I was updating the blog earlier, we had a new development, but I was not in the room to take the call. I walked back in the room, and the first thing out of John's mouth was, "It's a good thing we left a medical release form." Naturally, I panicked and asked about 5 times what happened before he would just come right out with it and tell me the story. I'll spare you the details, but Jocelyn's arm got pulled out of socket this morning. Mom had the medical release, so she took her to the pediatrician's office and then on to the hospital for x-rays. It popped back into place as they were doing the x-ray. I'm not sure who it has bothered more, Jocelyn or Mommy. I'm pretty upset and feeling very helpless from so far away. I just want to hold her. I'm sure I'm just tired and emotions are getting the best of me. Anyway, you might add Mommy and Jocelyn to your prayer list...and please pray that no one else in my family injures their right arm this week. I'm not sure how many more injured arms and medical tests we can take!

Day 1

John is doing well this morning. He is up and about. He was sitting in the chair when I arrived this morning. He'd already had breakfast and gone for a little walk. The pain is still bad, but I think he's just trying to wean himself off of the pain medicine too quickly. Afterall, this was pretty major surgery. He's happy right now watching the Jayhawks play Baylor in the Big 12 Tournament, so I slipped out for a few minutes to take care of some things and update all of you. I got our flights booked home...long story, but I left him in recovery last night to try to take care of it and the representative at Delta was a complete jerk. He wasn't helpful on finding us a flight at all, and when I asked him if the $150 change fee per ticket could be waived (b/c the tickets were already going to be an additional $500 each), he said, "Uh, I'm sorry, why would we do that?" Ahhh! I told him I'd just have to take care of it later. So, I just called a few minutes ago and got a very sweet lady who OFFERED to speak with her manager to have the fee waived. I didn't even have to ask. Not to mention, the addition price per ticket was much cheaper too. Praise the Lord! Some people...seriously. Anyway, so he should be discharged on Saturday morning, and we will leave Houston at 5:45 pm on Saturday night. We won't arrive home until 11:30 pm on Saturday night, but it was the only flight available to get out this weekend. Well, I better get in there and go check on him. Just wanted to give all of you the update today!

Recovery

John spent about 7 1/2 hours in recovery. He was probably stable after about 3 1/2 hours, but we spent the other 4 hours there waiting for a clean room to move to. He's doing well. his pain is under control now. He's looking forward to eating and watching college basketball tomorrow! We cannot use our cell phones in the room, but I'll check voicemail and text messages when I go get something to eat! We hope to go home on Sunday, but I have to work some things out with Delta!

4pm update-He's Done

The surgeon is the one that spoke to me at 4pm. He's all done. No long term damage. The artery is fine. They "peeled" the tumor off of a nerve to avoid damaging it. Two tendons are sewn together, but his mobility in his arm and hand should be fine.

They still don't know what the tumor is. Pathology will study it more and send it off if they still can't figure it out.

Thanks for all of your prayers. Sorry for short update. Having Internet issues and need to get back in case he is ready in recovery for me to visit. More tomorrow.

2pm Update

Well, first they told me he was in recovery and made me pack up all my stuff to go see him. I told the volunteer that there was no way, but she was sure she had the right person. So, they took me to recovery to the wrong person! Then, I came back to the waiting room and got an update from the nurse a few minutes later. She didn't have much to say...just that the official start time for surgery was 1:19 pm when they made the first incision and that his vital signs looked good. So now...I guess we wait until 4pm...

He's In Now

Well, they changed the surgery time on us again this morning. John got a call on his cell phone at 7am, and they asked us to check in for surgery at 9am. So, we went ahead and got up and ready and headed to surgery check-in. They told us that we would be checking in 1-2 hours before our actual surgery time. I think they took him back to pre-op at about 11:30 and we spent about an hour back there before they wheeled him in to surgery. Needless to say, I don't think there are any worries about them operating on the correct arm...they must've asked him 12 times why he was here. I was starting to get worried thinking..."for the LOVE, don't you people know why we are here!!!" Apparently it's just standard procedure these days, but I do think he got asked the routine questions a little more than normal since we had to switch surgeons. Then, we got held up b/c all of the medical consent forms had the other surgeons name on them. So...we had to wait for John to sign more paperwork. Anyway, all of the staff has been wonderful! The MRI from Monday does show that the tumor is sitting on a major artery. So, there is some concern about that. They will do everything they can to shave the tumor away from it without knicking the artery. Please pray for wisdom for Dr. Statcher as he works on that part of the surgery! Well, I'm supposed to get an update at 2pm EST, so I'll hopefully update a little more then!

Surgery Time

Since our surgery date was changed to Wednesday, we had nothing scheduled for today (Tuesday). Dave Relford, a family friend I have not seen in probably over 10 years, took care of us. He lives here in Houston and was able to show us around. He took us to Kemah Boardwalk, where we had some good seafood at an aquarium. We drove by NASA and the Johnson Space Center. We also drove around Galveston, which was hit by hurricane Ike. It was amazing to see the beaches destroyed and the buildings in rough shape. We also drove around downtown and saw the Toyota Center (where the Houston Rockets play) and Minute Maid Park (where the Houston Astros play). Thanks to Dave, we were able to get out for the day.

We did find out today when our surgery will be. We have to check in at 12:45p.m on Wednesday. The surgery will start approx. 2 hours later and will take around 4 hours, if all goes well. My guess is that it will take a little longer because they will have to work around the significant amount of muscle. They have marked my arm with a sharpie to specify which arm to operate on. I thought they were just messing with me, but many people have said the same thing. I was speaking with a guy yesterday (who was having his head operated on) while we were waiting for an MRI and he said that they wrote on his head "this side", so they would operate on the correct side of his head.

Katie will post again tomorrow evening to let everyone know how it went. I will not be able to because I will be drugged and sedated.

Surgery Date Changed!!!

Well, we woke up at 3:30 am EST and left our house at 4 am this morning to catch a 6 am flight out of Tri Cities airport. Our flight in Atlanta was delayed, so we were late getting to the appointment with the surgeon. We waited a long time and it seemed like we were really late getting in to see him, but we thought it was due to our tardiness. Then, the nurse, who remembered meeting with us back in January, dropped the bomb on us. John's surgeon was admitted to the Emergency Room last night. He'd been sick all week last week, but he really thought he'd be okay by today. Obviously he was wrong. So, his colleague has agreed to take over his surgeries for the week. Unfortunately many of them are being pushed back in order to fit all of them in. So, we met with the other surgeon this afternoon, and John will have surgery sometime late in the day on Wednesday. He is currently having another MRI done right now at the request of the new surgeon since it has been almost 2 months since the last one. We have a free day tomorrow and have talked about going to visit my brother. I hope that John will get plenty of rest tonight and tomorrow though so he will have plenty of strength for recovery after surgery. John's mom is flying to our house tomorrow morning to help take care of the kids. We've all had a touch of a stomach bug, and my mom would not be able to miss work all week this week. So, just when we thought we had a plan in place, everything changed! I'll try to post tomorrow after 5pm CST when we have an exact surgery time. The surgeon said it should take 3-4 hours for surgery. Wednesday will be another long day. We appreciate your prayers, for John's surgery, for my strength, for my mom's strength as she cares for the kids, for John's mom's safety as she travels tomorrow, and for our kids to be comforted while we are away as Jackson seems to have a pretty good understanding of what is going on right now. We'll keep you posted.

Brand New Sales Director!!!

I had to share with all of you that I'm officially a brand new Sales Director! Thank you to everyone that helped us get to this point! When I called Jackson into my office to show him the tracking sheet and that we had all 30 names that we needed, he threw up his arms in the air with his hands in little fists and said, "YES! WE DID IT!" The kids are so excited about this and have truly taken ownership in it! God really worked a lot of miracles these past two months to make all of this happen, and I'm so thankful and excited! Thanks for sharing this journey with us! As many of you know, we head back to Houston, TX on March 9th for surgery on March 10th. I'll plan to update the blog some while we are there and after we return home this time too! We'd really appreciate your continued prayers for John next week, and I am so thankful that God has provided and taken care of all of our deadlines prior to us leaving for surgery! It is such a relief to me! God is so good!