It has been an extremely busy few weeks getting ready to travel back to Baltimore for the removal of Ricki's tumors that are located between her left lung and heart in addition to preparing my classroom for while I am gone. I just looked over my lists and am amazed that everything got done! We couldn't have accomplished it without so many angels coming to our aide. Those sweet Angels cleaned, cut out things for school, made copies, pasted, sewed, fed us, prayed for us, gave us lots of hugs of reassurance, and were so generous in every way in helping us get to Baltimore. How blessed we are to have such sweet support!
So that I could get in the first day of school our flight left later and we arrived at the Ronald McDonald House at about 1:30 a.m. We are resting up today in preparation for her first surgery tomorrow. We will see how our sweet Ricki is doing and try to something a little fun too.
I have been asked what Ricki's schedule is for her upcoming surgeries.
Friday morning she will have a two hour embolization procedure where they are going to embolize the arteries that are near the tumors in order to minimize the bleeding during surgery.
Tuesday will be the big day. To remove the tumors they will approach the surgery from her left side. In order to get to the tumors they will deflate her left lung. They are hoping the tumors are not attached to the organs and that they will be able to peel them off her lung and heart. If they are not able to peel them off they will remove most of the tumor. The other concern is that these tumors grow from nerves. These tumors are coming from some of her autonomic nerves. Because of the location of the tumors they are hopeful this will only affect her bodies regulation of hot and cold on her left side. Likely after her surgery her left side will get randomly cold, or have like a hot flash and get sweaty on her left side.
We have felt peace and comfort as we have approached this surgery. We are so humbled by the outpouring of love and support for Ricki. Please know how much your prayers are felt. The power of prayer is real. It is hard to put into words but when The drs told us of the seriousness of the situation as a family we were overwhelmed and distraught. As soon as others began praying a calm settled over our family and we were given the strength to move forward in faith.
We finally made it on the plane!
This is a side view of the tumors that are coming out...
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