Happy News

"Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear.

If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today."

- Thich Nhat Hanh -

While tempering my optimism with the knowledge that she is far from out of the woods, my mom's surgery was a huge success!

We got a call from the surgeon at about 10:00 pm last night that everything had gone, as she put it, "beautifully" and that my mom had remained stable throughout the entire surgery.

We were ecstatic and overcome with relief, but still aware that perhaps the biggest test post-surgery would be when they took her off the ventilator and removed the breathing tube. Would her lungs recover? Would she be able to breathe on her own? B1, B2, C, and I had many difficult conversations over the course of the past week, trying to anticipate every "what if" scenario and establishing my mom's wishes in the event things did not go well. So while hearing the incredible news that she had survived the surgery was awesome, we knew there were still challenges and unknowns ahead. Battling Pulmonary Fibrosis for the past eight years has taken its toll on her poor lungs.

We didn't hear anything through the night, which we took as a great sign. They moved her from the post-op recovery area to a room in the Trauma Intensive Care Unit overnight and I came to her room at 9:00 am this morning. She was intubated, of course, but awake; they told me they'd stopped the sedation because they wanted to try and remove the tube and get her off the ventilator. We had not anticipated they would be trying this less than 12 hours after surgery!

The ICU doctor came in and explained everything and when I asked if I should step out of the room, he told me I could stay while they did it. We went over her wishes once again, and although I tried my best to keep it together, I cried and she was shaking and looked so afraid. I stepped out of the way and a team of people surrounded her bed and talked her through everything as it was happening. The terror of waiting for her to take a breath on her own is something I don't care to ever experience again.

And then she inhaled. All on her own.

They put her usual oxygen on and then she was breathing. In and out. And it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

She is in a tremendous amount of pain. She has a huge incision in her abdomen and will have a colostomy bag for the rest of her life because they removed most of her colon. That healing will take a long time.

But oh my word, does she look good as far as I'm concerned!

She is so amazingly strong. As I said the other day, she is a fighter. She's 5 feet tall and 90 pounds and I do not know another person as tough as she is.

I've spent all day with her and now I'm getting ready to head home for the night. She's in excellent hands and needs to rest so her body can heal. I haven't been home since early Wednesday morning, so I'm hoping to get some sleep tonight as well, since there's a lot of work to do in the coming weeks to help her recuperate. We are all pretty exhausted from this long ordeal.

When we were told the other day that she only had two choices - hospice or surgery. It was a matter of choosing between two awful things. The reason she - and we - chose surgery is because it offered hope. 

There was no guarantee things would go as well as they did; I could just as easily be writing the saddest post of my life today. But that hope sustained us all week, through those difficult but necessary conversations, through the moments of doubt as to whether surgery was the correct choice, and through the uncertainly of what was ahead. Hope.

She is a big Star Wars fan, and the last words I spoke to her as they wheeled her away from me into the OR last night were, "May the Force Be With You."

It was.

family is everything

Happy Tails to you!