The surgery Thursday got started a little late and lasted a little longer than was scheduled, but everything went really well for Carrie-Anne and she’s doing as good as can be expected today. We were released from M.D.Anderson at about 10:30 yesterday morning and, after a stop at Walgreens, arrived here at our temporary home at 8181 Med Center, directly across the street from NRG Stadium where Texas Tech blew out Ole Miss a couple nights ago and the Houston Texans lose every week.

Carrie-Anne is extremely sore all over, moving very slowly, and feels like she’s in constant heatstroke. But she is cancer-free – they got every bit of it and a couple of lymph nodes for good measure. Praise God for his faithfulness to my beautiful wife! And thank the Lord for our cancer surgeon, Dr. Refinetti, and our plastic surgeon, Dr. Hassid, and all the wonderful nurses and caregivers at M.D.Anderson. Everything looks like it’s supposed to look today and seems to be working correctly. I think Carrie-Anne’s greatest concern is that I’m doing all the cooking for both of us over these two weeks in Houston.

And the math.

We weren’t really prepared for all the math. C-A is taking four prescriptions for pain and antibiotics at three different times of the day at least twice each during the day, she has four drains that must be emptied and measured and totaled and logged twice a day, and the thermometer they sent home with us is a Celsius-only instrument that must be converted to Fahrenheit. Keeping up  with all this is stretching our limited math capabilities to the breaking point. C-A is also doing exercises three times per day, inhaling into a weird little plastic instrument that measures her lung capacity every hour, and we’re doing laps around  the apartment courtyard every two to three hours to keep the blood  flowing and the stir-crazy at bay. She is a determined patient and I’m doing the best I can to keep up with her.

We are both so thankful for every phone call, text, and card from our dearest friends and family in Midland, Amarillo, Fort Worth, and Dallas  – friends who go back with us over 30-years to Marble Falls to the brand new friends we’ve made in the last year or so at GCR Church. Your love and concern and great care for us is overwhelming and means the world. It’s humbling. Encouraging. We are so  grateful.

We have a follow-up here with the cancer surgeon on Wednesday and the plastics surgeon on Friday. Our plan is to come home on the 11th, but we won’t know if that’s going to happen or not until these two follow-ups. We are asking the Lord to speed up Carrie-Anne’s recovery so we can be home that Wednesday night, when our middle daughter Valerie is scheduled to fly to Midland to help out for a few days.

In the meantime, we’re settling in today for the two college football playoff games – Go Frogs! – and probably a Happy New Year that will come long before midnight.

Peace,

Allan