Noel started a post earlier today but she kept falling asleep so no idea when it will be posted. She didn’t get a lot of sleep on Monday night after the surgery. The next day was better but last night she kept getting awakened by her doctor’s “entourage” of residents, medical students, physician assistants, etc. Finally, Annie told her nurse “no mas” and the nurse kept the entourage out of her room and she got some good sleep. Still today she was sleeping a lot. We did do about seven circuits around the ward, so that was good, but she had a blood transfusion in the afternoon and the medication pretty much knocked her out, for what she said was a good nap, but it was unfortunate if she wanted to communicate with her sister Ellen when she was visiting.
Part of the reason for these visits seems to be that the doctor’s entourage can’t quite believe Annie’s birth date. She looks much younger, they say – something the doctor made a point of telling me when he called this morning. (Aside: As if I haven’t been hearing this all our married life.)
Someone remarked to me in an email today that this blog hasn’t been very clear on the details and what we know. So here’s what we know. During the surgery they found a lot of malignant tumor, which they suspect is ovarian cancer but the ultimate diagnosis of that will have to be determined after the pathology report is received. Part of it got into her colon and they had to take out a section of that, but they re-connected it without have to do an external ostomy. Her doctor felt the surgery went well, and despite how extensive the cancer was he was pleased that he thought they got about 95% of it. They’ll have to use chemotherapy on what remains. The goal right now is for Noel to recover from the surgery, which she is doing quite nicely. After she does that (five to six weeks), she’ll start chemotherapy. They’ve sent samples of the tumor out for analysis and for testing to see which chemotherapy agents seem to have the most effect upon it. If she does her chemotherapy at UCSF (University of California San Francisco – which is where she had the surgery and is now), she may also have some clinical trials available (whether we do those is another question). But there is a lot of information to gather and assess before that decision is made. Meanwhile we will focus on healing and what we can do (e.g., diet, exercise, etc. – our friend Bob Wicker in Minnesota says she has to give up chardonnay but may be able to still have some champagne!).
A little about Annie’s medical care team. Her doctor is John Chan, MD; he is head of the Gynecologic Oncology department at UCSF. UCSF is one of the top programs for oncology and for gynecologic oncology in particular, and Dr. Chan is one of the best in the country. We had him vetted and checked, including by one of my childhood friends at the National Cancer Institute, and he’s as good as we could wish for. So as far as medical expertise and care is concerned, we have all we could want. Dr. Chan has been very attentive to Noel and to us; we’re in very good shape in that regard. As for UCSF and the nursing care, it’s been great – aside from sometimes having too many folks coming in at night to check Annie’s BP (age) and such! But they’ve been great.
Right now Annie is on a “sips and chips” diet – that means a few sips of water and some chips of ice. Otherwise she’s getting her nutrition from an IV. The first step is to make sure that her re-sected colon is functioning properly. Once they are certain that that has healed properly, she can start having real food and they can consider discharge. We suspect discharge won’t come before Monday, but we don’t know for sure. Noel is doing her best to speed things up – she’s probably making another circuit of the ward as I type this.
One downside of UCSF is that their television station coverage is severely limited. They have CNN, the Weather Channel and a bunch of local stations, but no tennis channel (Noel’s favorite) and no ESPN (which the ND – Stanford game may be on Saturday night). Bummer. I have to do extra duty at home with the DVR so she can have something to watch when she gets home (although we do get the tennis channel 24/7, which she loves, aside from the “Bag Check” segment).
I pick up Luke in the morning at the airport in Oakland and we’ll go in to see Noel then. After that it’s Thanksgiving at home, and in particular thanking God for Annie as mother and wife.
Noel has read (or has heard, from my reading) all of your comments, and it buoys her tremendously. Happy Thanksgiving and many blessings to you all.
Clark
noelstanton 