Temples, Tucson, and Pathology Reports

Well, all I can say is that this has been an eventful day. Rob had a rough morning due to another change in his pain medicine. The pain nurse was in and out of the room several times trying to get things under control. Rob is trying to get a little sleep right now. He is exhausted from the pain. On a scale of one to ten, he was an eight.

The kids skipped school today to go to the open house of the LDS Draper Temple with Steven & Elaine. They thought that it was neat and glad that they went. There are beautiful paintings everywhere and they liked the baptizimal font. The railings around the font were brass colored, and Jacob wanted to know if they were gold. Jacob wanted to know why the tour only went through the men's dressing rooms and not the women's. Noah liked the crystals hanging from the chandaliers. Gabrielle liked the bride's room, especially the beautiul carpet. She reported to me that the door is double wide so the bride could fit through. (Her dress, not her body.) They were excited when their Grandma told them that their Dad helped Karl Quilter with the Angel Moroni that sits atop the temple.

My sister, Megan, who is here from Tucson helping me with the kids, decided this morning to take Sabrina, her daughter, back home to get her back to her regular schedule of dancing queen! She performed her Teddy Bear Picnic dance with such precision - look out! Megan thought that it would be a nice diversion for my kids to go with her for the weekend. So after deciding on the departure time, I ran around the house like a mad-woman packing all the things that they would need for the weekend trip (and forgetting many items - calling Megan five more times to put more things in the suitcase).

I drove them out to the airport and the kids were extremely excited. Jacob told me, "I feel like an adult!" He could hardly contain his excitement. He just called me and told me that he was on the plane. They will come back Monday night (yes, they will miss school on Monday - their teachers have been awesome to give homework that they can do while away - plus I am making them read books at Megan's).

Dr. Collins just came in. He said that the tumor in his lung was confined - the margins were negative (which means that there was no cancer around the outer edges of the removed lobe). The old margins (the area where Dr. Collins removed the bottom lobe last time) had a tumor in it - this is the area by his heart we were concerned about (the one that was attached to the chest wall and looked clean the other day - THIS is why you wait for the pathology report), but the area around it looked clean. The tumor had metasticized from the first cancer three years ago. The cancer cells were just too small to see last time.

The bronchial tube were cancer free. Dr. Collins said that the important thing is that his lymph nodes were clean as well. We asked Dr. Collins about the funky breathing he had (the breathing that he has had for nearly a year now and the whole reason we found out about the cancer). We were convinced that after Dr. Collins told us about the 'freak of nature' that Rob is (the bronchial tube adhering to the chest wall), that, that was the reason for the cellophane-sounding breathing. Well, Dr. Collins proved our theory wrong. He said he thought that it was due to the tumor choking the airways in the middle lobe. Hmmm. Something to think about. (If you start breathing like you have cellophane in your lungs, you might want to get that checked out.)