Bobbie Update - Jan 16, 2009

For those that were curious, the intestinal surgery is scheduled to be around noon today.  Bobbie is in pretty good spirits, but scared, as is to be expected.  They did her first follow-up brain MRI yesterday, which had been delayed due to the abdominal issues, and found 2 more spots in her brain (news that she did not, unsurprisingly, take well).  Those are going to be treated with the cyberknife  (video ) here at UNC and they are going to do that once her in-hospital recovery is drawing to an end for the intestinal surgery.  I haven't spoken with the neurologist or radiation doc as far as that goes - she was told about this yesterday while I was at work - so I don't have much in the way of details as of yet.  As a result of those findings, the surgical oncologist is only going to remove the larger, bleeding tumors from her intestine so that the brain procedure can be performed during her stay.  The removal of all intestinal tumors, he said, would likely result in an 8-10 week recovery time as opposed to the current expected 6 week recovery.  I don't follow exactly the reasoning behind everything because he came by to visit her prior to my arrival this morning, but he will be giving us a status following the surgery and I will forward an update at that point.

For now, we focus our energies on getting her through this afternoon's surgery.