Recovery Time

Well I need to update all of you on the latest at our house. It's been a long and difficult couple of weeks as we have made many decisions.

We met with a rectal surgeon about one month ago to further investigate the rectal pain Fred was still experiencing. I was very impressed by Dr. Kim. He is not a big fan of putting patients through pain so we decided to do an internal ultrasound of the rectum to see what is going on.

What we discovered was a hole in Fred's tale bone and the tumor was wrapped around the nerves that cross over the tailbone. So taking out the tumor is not an option or you would have to take out the tailbone and that is something I would not wish on anyone not to mention the mortality rate is VERY high.

So why is there a hole you may ask? Well it is very rare for this to happen. I have been asking all of you to keep us in your prayers and well it worked. I testify that prayers are answered. Fred responded so well to the chemo treatments that it left a hole. What we don't know is if the tumor was already in the tailbone and with chemo it killed the tumor and left a hole or if the chemo was targeting the tumor that is laying on top of the tailbone and weakened the bone to the point that now we have a hole.

We actually are very blessed that the tumor is on the posterior side of the rectum. If it had been on the anterior side it would have been near the stomach and bladder and those are sterile areas and if there would have been a hole created there and then the chemo infused into that area it would have killed him. So thanks for the prayers because I feel very blessed and this could have been so much worse than it is.

Therefore Fred had surgery on 6-30-11. To protect Fred's privacy I am not going to go into details of the surgery, but we just had to reroute things to prevent sepsis (full body infection) in the future and hopefully relieve some of his pain.

Surgery went well and he is recovering well. We still welcome many many prayers. We were discharged from the hospital today.  Hopefully recovery will be very quick and back to regular activities very soon.

Thanks to all of you for your support, love and friendship.  It means everything to us.  Have a great day.