Update on Sara’s Appendix Cancer Surgery

Wow!  It’s been a month since the last time I posted an update about my sister’s surgery.  Sara was released from the hospital after a week and a half.  She stayed in a hotel for a week.  Oh my the adventures they can tell, from having to move from a hotel with bed bugs, haggling over getting their money back for the unused portion, water leaks in walls, pipes bursting in sinks, feeding pump malfunctions.  They had quite the time of it.  At her first doctor’s appointment she was readmitted to the hospital.  Labs showed she had an infection.  She remained in the hospital for another week and a half.  She was then released from the hospital just after her husband went home for the weekend thinking Sara would be in the hospital through the weekend.  Grr. 

Her daughter Ashley, who you are familiar with as she babysat my children when we went to Alaska and gave you all the Irish kiddo funnies from while we were gone, managed to get her to a hotel. 

Here is a sample of what they went through in her words:  Mom and I… We were doing really bad this morning. We were at our wits end. Out of things we needed and not sure how we’d get them. Bottled water was one. We needed it so badly to keep mom hydrated, because the tap water tastes like pool water and makes her nauseated. We didn’t know how to get it though. I was about to even call a taxi just to take me across the highway to the Walmart so I could at least get bottled water.

Then the nurse showed up to take mom’s labs. Blood and stuff. And she started telling us how she was on her way into the office and her boss called and asked her to make an unexpected, on the way stop to see us. So she got here and apologized up and down but she had to do all this extra paperwork since the stop was unexpected. So she was here almost 2 hours, and we get to talking. She helped mom with some of the medical complaints like the bandages and the tape tearing her skin, and showed me how to do some stuff. Then we mentioned we have no water and this and that just making conversation since mom looked sick while trying to take pills with that tap water.

The latest news is that she was rushed back to ER on Tuesday because she was vomiting black stuff.  The CT scan came back clean, but doctors really don’t know why she is in so much pain or why she is so nauseated all the time.  For now they are keeping her in the hospital.  She is getting some much needed pain relief via IV and is finally getting some rest and sleep. 

I have been able to visit her twice in Houston.  With the added travel and stress I haven’t been keeping up with my blog posts as well as I like to, but we’re all hanging in there! 

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As to how mom and dad are doing?  Here is a note from my mom:  Some of you ask how Hal and I are holding up. I really appreciate your concern for us. I’ll speak for myself–I think about Sara most of my waking hours and pray for her. Also for the rest of her family. Over the years and months we keep thinking if she could just see this specialist, etc. They will find something, and we think they can cure that and now she will be okay, but no. Then they found the ovarian tumors and operated, and I thought that would be the answer to everything, but no. Finally, if she could just get to the specialists in Houston. . . . But when I get most discouraged the Lord brings me back to Isaiah 55:8-9. I remember my Mother helping me memorize it when I was a child. The Lord knows what we don’t and I believe He has a purpose in everything. But all that being said, it is hard to see your child suffer. And no matter the age of a child . . . . she is still our little girl.

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Thank you so much to all who are praying!  Please keep on!