Day 63

I’m really tired so I’m posting today’s Facebook update* as my 365 Days of Carol Anne entry. We were up at 5:30am so as to be up and showered and ready to leave at 7:30am.

You’ve heard the expression, Man plans God Laughs? Well just as we were ready to leave Snowball Kitty threw up his entire breakfast. Chuck cleaned it up real quick and off we went, worried like hell about poor Snowy. We arrived at the hospital garage right at 8:30am and were in radiology 5 minutes later. I gave my info and not too long after the Patience, the nurse came to take me back to the area where I’d wait for the doctor. She was so nice and so reassuring. It’s really amazing how wonderful all the nurses and doctors at Cooper University Hospital are.

Dr. Brody came and talked to me before Lisa came and took me to the ultrasound room. There they scanned my neck/jaw area with the ultrasound. They looked at it live and took a few pictures before giving me some Lidocaine to numb the area. After I was good and numb Dr. Brody scanned some more and inserted the needle to take the biopsy. They checked to be sure they had all they needed and then they let me get up and go out to the waiting area where nurse Patience gave me Tylenol for the pain and ice for the swelling. Chuck was able to be with me while I waited to be discharged. I needed to stay about half an hour and have my blood pressure checked a few times. She gave me orange juice while I waited.

Dr. Brody was very reassuring and kind and answered all my questions and explained stuff to me when I asked. All in all he said that it looked to him like a benign lymph node that was reactionary (from surgery, from a cold, etc.), I heard him say to Lisa, who I think was the ultrasound tech that it was fatty and when I asked what that meant he said it meant that it looked normal that when it’s normal it’s fatty when there’s something wrong it’s hard. When he came back in to the room from checking to see if they had enough for the slides he told me that to him it looked like what he expected it to look like. So God willing it looks like everything is okay. I won’t know for sure until this time next week so please keep praying for me. I appreciate all your love and kindness and encouraging words. I couldn’t get through this without all of you.

My swelling is coming down nicely from this afternoon and the pain is much less. One hurdle down, a few more to go. God willing this time next week we’ll be celebrating good news. Later this month comes the skin graft surgery. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

* As it turns out I rambled on longer than the original Facebook update.