As I sit down to write this update I don't even know where to begin. We were at cancer care this morning for over 4 hours. As you can imagine we received a lot of information today. So I will try my best to walk you through all the details...
We arrived just before 8:30am and were brought upstairs to the theatre. A nurse greeted us almost right away to confirm who we were and told us it would be a few minutes. We waited about 10 mins and she came back and said it was our turn. Dr Nason (Rob's surgeon) and his nurse Pam met us at the door and said we could sit down. I didn't even look up but there were over 20 people in the room. I sat down in the front row and Rob sat on a chair in front of the Resident doctor with everyone watching him. His neck and mouth was examined by the doctor and 5 minutes later we were told we could leave. After we left they saw a few more cases and then they talked as a team to decide on the best treatment plan for each patient. As much as this meeting is very intimidating it is good to know that there are so many professionals that want to see Rob get better and will do whatever they can to help.
After about 30 minutes Dr Nason and Pam came in to the room we were waiting in. Dr Nason said that everyone agreed that surgery was the best option. At this point the MRI and CT scan show that it is not in his lymph nodes (Praise God!) however they will still remove a few nodes to be sure there isn't some small cells that are cancerous. His cancer is considered stage 2 specifically T2N0 meaning a stage 2 tumor with no nodes affected. The surgery date is May 6th and it will be an all day surgery. They will remove the tumor as well as a border of healthy tissue to be sure they got it all. They will have to take a large part of the right side of his tongue and will reconstruct it with tissue likely from his arm. He will also have a large incision on his neck from where they take out the lymph nodes and a tracheotomy just in case the swelling blocks his air ways. He will be in hospital for up to 2 weeks and will not be able to talk or eat for some of that time. He will be off work for 3 months to recover from the surgery and if further treatment is needed he could be off for more.
Dr Nason and his team have been wonderful so far. They remind us constantly to call if we have questions and that they are always there if we need to come in.
Next we met with the Speech Language Pathologist. She talked to us about the reality of the change Rob will experience in talking and eating with his "new" tongue. This was hard for Rob to take thinking about not being able to talk normally and not being able to eat things like raw veggies and nuts. Some people recover 100% with a surgery like this but she wanted to prepare us for the possible changes. Rob will have exercises to do after the surgery and hopefully with a little work he can go back to as normal as possible.
After that we were taken to patient services where we talked to a counsellor about how we are both doing with everything and what worries us the most. She talked with us about how to help Isaac understand what is happening and things that I can do with Isaac while Rob is in hospital. One thing she recommended and something we are going to do is buy a few of those recordable story books so that when Rob can't talk he can still do story time with Isaac.
Lastly we met with a dietician. Rob's tongue is getting more and more painful so eating and talking is getting more difficult. He is basically on a liquid diet right now so she gave us a bunch of suggestions to be sure Rob is getting the proper nutrition and is strong for the surgery.
After 4 hours we are exhausted! We are thankful for some good news today and processing what the next few months are going to look like for us. Thank you for all the prayers today. It seems crazy to me the peace that I feel when we walk in Cancer Care and the only way to explain it is knowing the army of people that are praying while we are there.
Please continue to pray for us as we figure out all the details that go along with this (work, child care, etc), that the lymph nodes that are biopsied are clear, for Rob's pain and that it can be controlled, for wisdom for Dr Nason and his team, and that God would heal Rob completely.
Thank you for loving our family! Karen
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