My Absence Explained

Sorry for my long absence. There’s a lot going on.
First, L’s surgery went beautifully. I documented it all in Word, and will eventually post it here, back-dated, so you can read it “as it happened” so to speak.

The current stuff is not good news.
My Dad is sick. He has a tumor in his pancreas. Chances are VERY high that it’s malignant. It’s blocking the duct, and there’s a second spot in the body of the pancreas as well. Surgical consult is Wednesday and my understanding is they’ll go in pretty much immediately if it’s operable. He’ll be treated at Virginia Mason, where there is a Pancreatic Cancer specialty program that has a 55% 5 year survival rate. Anywhere else it’s 5%. He’s “under” right this moment, undergoing an endoscopic ultrasound in order to stage it. It looks like Stage 1 from the CT scans, but we’ll know more in about an hour.

The good news is that each tumor is only 1.5cm in size, and they’re not usually found until they’re about five times that. He had cut out soda and cookies and started walking, and had lost 60 pounds. About 2 weeks ago he started craving fruit juice, and was drinking over a gallon a day. Since the duct is blocked he isn’t getting any insulin, so his blood sugar was well over 500 and it made him really sick right away. His cholesterol was also off the charts and potassium was really high as well. He was terribly jaundiced, and generally felt awful.

Thank God he gave in to those juice cravings and made himself so very sick so fast. It means he has a higher chance that he’ll survive this.

Keep him in your prayers please. The surgery will have some tough consequences either way.

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