Surgery

My mom had her surgery today. It was supposed to be at 10 am but got moved to 2 pm. So we got there about 10:30. As I was walking through the hospital to find my mom's room Ashlie texted me and asked where I was. Wow. You actually noticed I wasn't there? Cause honestly I didn't expect you to. Then when I got to the room there were a TON of people there. And Darbi was there!! Yay! That made me really happy! They took my mom less than 5 minutes after we got there. She looked like she was going to start crying as we hugged her goodbye. Sheri told me I made her cry when I hugged her. We all went to the waiting area and did whatever...some played poker with beans provided by Darbi! Then about 12 they called my dad back there and said they hadn't taken her in for surgery yet so he could go back there with her while she waited. So we all went to eat at Mexican Inn down the street. My dad called me at 1:00 and said they had just taken her in for surgery. Later when we got back it turned out that they didn't actually take her till 1:45. So she spent a LOT of time back there worrying. And we all know she was very worried.

The surgery lasted about 2 hrs and then the doctor came out and talked to my dad. He said that they got all of the cancer out. They removed all of the lymphnodes on that side because they had pretty much grown together with the cancer. The had to take out part of a nerve and then splice it. They removed a jugular vain that had been compressed by the cancer to the size of a pencil and had practically nothing running through it. They also found some cancer in cartlidge in her ear and removed it. They will have to go back in after about 6 weeks and reconstruct it so that it doesn't cave in and she can hear. Overall the surgery went very well. She will be in the hospital for a few days.

They told us that we could go see her in ICU after about an hr and a half. We ended up only having to wait about 45 min. I went in to see her with my dad, Brent, and Jacob. To be perfectly honest....she looked pretty dang bad to me. She had stitches across some of her throat and some on the side of her neck that ran up in front of her ear. She also had 3 drainage tubes protruding from her skin. None of it was covered. Sheri and Josh said that she looked great and that you could tell a plastic surgeon had stitched her up. I guess I'm just not used to seeing things like that. Apparently neither is Jacob or Brent. My dad had tears in his eyes and hugged me. Jacob just stared at her and would never leave the room. Brent started crying as we walked down the hall way and I told him it was ok and hugged him. It looked really bad...but I was ok until they cried. I can usually handle things, until others lose it. You could tell it pained my aunts and grandparents to see her like that too. Sheri said that it will look worse tomorrow because she will be more swollen and will be bruised a lot. But I'm just glad that they got it all out without too much trouble. My dad is on his way home. He was going to stay the night but he called and said my mom woke up and told him to go home and go to sleep. He has been up for a good 30 hrs straight because he had work last night. I hope he doesn't fall asleep on the way!

When I got home Darbi went with me to help deliver all my cookie dough. Rhonda volunteered to take Brent so that we could get it done twice as fast. We started eating the dough that my mom bought while we were driving around! lol. That was my dinner....delicious.

So I did absolutely no homework this weekend. It's not that I have any due tomorrow, but I due have a lot due wednesday and friday and I will be at the hospital a lot. It's going to be pretty tough. Not sure how I'll finish it all. I was already falling asleep on the way home from the hospital. I was there from about 10:30 till 6:30. That's a long time to just sit around. And I tried to read stuff for school but it's hard to concentrate with everyone there. Maybe I'll try to read it before I fall asleep tonight. But it's been a long day. Time to hit the sack.