(written day after)
I won't be able to do justice to Annie's sharing of her experience, so I'll just give a quick rundown of the day to give everyone an update. And Annie will probably hop on the computer late this week to update the blog. She's feeling well.
Many have told me how strong Annie is through this. After yesterday... it sure does hit home... actually it did as early as 10am in the morning. Wow, my wife is tough. Annie herself says "that's not the usual me". A testament to the power of Christ, whom we draw on, and the prayers of so many faithful friends and family.
Well, the day started with us praying and God reminded me that morning that "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Rom 8:28). And yes, no doubt, the surgery day ended with such a clear reminder of God's faithfulness.
We got to the hospital around 9am to check in at the surgery pavilion. While we were checking in, an asian lady wearing scrubs came up, said she'd get us settled in for the day. And guess what? God had already put things in motion. Her name is Teresa. She usually goes to Grace ___ church (erm.. can't translate the cantonese, and no one has for me yet... ). Anyways, she happend to be at ECC for Sunday easter service! So she was wondering when the church prayed for us if she'd see us the next day. And there we were! She found Annie a comfortable area, got her blankets, talked about the surgeon, checked our schedules through the day, made sure we were fine, etc...just really made Annie and family feel at ease.
We went over to Nuclear Medicine to get the radiactive tracers injected into Annie's breast so that they could find the sentinel lymph node. They say that for some people, this is easy and it's found in 15 mins and for some, it takes a long time, up to 3 hours. Annie was done in 15 mins. Annie sure was tough. Since I got to keep looking, boy, the doc poked her quite a bunch of times (8) to put all that stuff in her. The funny thing about this part (at least for the geeky part of me), is that the procedure took 15 mins, but the doc and tech assistant had printer problems for 40 mins. The printer wouldn't print (the box connecting the printer to the network was turned off... heh)
It was back to waiting.
(oh, and there was a steady stream of visitors, friends that hung out through the day, brought us lunch, brought us dinner, called, left messages, prayed (wherever you were), cheered annie up after surgery.... the works. Annie felt so loved. I'm so thankful. Thank you...)
It was quite a long wait, but all fine. The surgical nurse came by around 2:45, followed by the surgeon, etc. And the anesthesiologists showed up at 3:30 and they two of them were great. They were funny and that sure made Annie relax. (Other than giving her some "cocktail"). We wished her well and off they went. With an estimated 2.5 hours to completion.
Surgery good news part 1. The nurse called the waiting room an hour later to say that the initial tests of the sentinel lymph node was negative so they wouldn't have to remove all the lymph nodes.
Surgery good news part 2. 5:15 or so and the surgeon (Dr Anderson) appeared. All done! He said things went smoothly and Annie was on her way to the recovery area.
Neat happenings at waiting room. We went over to another waiting area as Annie went to recovery. And while we were there, a gentlemen came up to where Annie's dad sat, knelt beside the chair, asked if dad had a relative in surgery and shared with Annie's dad a piece of paper. He had written 2 versus down (Exodus 23:25 and Psalms 107:20). Since the girls hanging out were doing BSF homework, there was a bible handy, and doubly handy was the presence of one of those chinese-english bible.
And after an hour.. off to the room!
God is good. And the power of His love, and the love of all our friends, who are vessels His love, indescribable.
(..will edit and post more details later...)