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On Monday evening, when I walked into the recovery room, Erik opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, "Emily, you'll never believe the dream I had! We bought a farmhouse in Vermont, and ran it as a B&B..."[...]
Just met with Dr. Finley, who reports that Erik's surgery went perfectly, and he's now in the recovery room. Now his main job will be getting up and moving around as much as possible, and healing. :-)[...]
This is Karen. Erik’s now gone into surgery, and I wanted to post a tale of gratitude:
Our family didn’t stop reading bedtime story as the kids got older--we just upped the content to match their age level. We have been reading Lord of the Rings for our story for about a year now, and by coincidence our heroes entered Mordor about the time Erik was diagnosed, and the parallels, extending Erik’s metaphor, have kept surfacing in interesting ways.[...]
That’s either a good thing, of course, or it means I’m in denial about the surgery itself!
Again, though, so far so good: I’ve been on a liquid diet for the past two days (and a low-fat diet for the past week) in preparation for the surgery. Not exactly what I would choose, but Karen and Cameron have helped by making a delicious turkey broth and by puréeing some non-fat honey Greek yoghourt with some milk; these augment the Carnation Instant Breakfast and the yoghourt drinks.... But at least I can still have coffee, and I was able to enjoy a wonderful turkey dinner when we celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday.[...]
Some of you might know that my “new” plan for the “Mapping Mordor” chapter had been to get all toponymic research done before the surgery, so that I could simply write between then and Yule — submitting a text draft in late December (only six weeks late) and telling the editors how many graphic images I’d be supplying (and where they’d need to go and what size they’d need to be) — and preparing the graphics in January while the editors and lay readers were looking at my draft text.[...]
I really don’t expect to have much more news until after the surgery: a CAT scan and a PET scan have shown that the tumor is basically gone (or perhaps completely gone — they can’t say for certain until they’ve seen it in person), and that there’s no longer any sign of it in the nearest lymph node, either. That, coupled with my ability now to eat basically anything (so long as I don’t eat fast), some solid weight gain, and general good health mean I’ll be in good shape for the surgery when it comes.[...]
