Marian died today, Sunday December 2, in her 88th year and one day short of her 46th wedding anniversary. She died in the house she loved, as she wished to do. She had no pain; she simply became unresponsive for a few hours and then stopped breathing.[...]

Well, I didn't get the luck of the draw. Although my cancer was detected early enough to be treated surgically, there was about a 50-50 chance that it would recur, and mine has metastasized to the liver.[...]

I haven't posted for quite a while because nothing much has been happening.

I had read that it takes up to a year to fully recover from the Whipple procedure, but thought I could do better than that. Seems now that that was an overly-optimistic assumption. I am recovering strength and energy, but very very slowly.[...]

The C-Diff recurrence  kept me in the hospital for a week. I'm home again now, trying to get firmly on the road to recovery.

Thanks always for your support and good wishes. [...]

(David, posting with Marian's approval)

Marian's recovery has been slowed by a couple of problems. One, she has been hit by clinical depression, which makes everything harder. Then this past weekend she got hit by a recurrence of the C-Diff bug. This has led to at least a couple of days back in the familiar confines of Stanford hospital.[...]

After 14 days in hospital I was finally able to come home yesterday, but the doctors still have me on a string. My incision is not healing as they would wish, so I have a big bandage with a plastic tube that connects to a little suction box that makes quiet little clucking and farting noises as it drains the wound.[...]

My white blood cell count went up a bit and they thought my incision might be infected, so they gave me an antibiotic, which had the unfortunate side effect of killing some gut bacteria. That gave C-diff, the pirate of the bacterial world, an opening, so I got diarrhea and the symptoms of a flu.  I've been zoned out recovering from that for a day and a half waiting for the second antibiotic, the one that kills C-diff (clostridium dificile), to work. Home is still on the horizon but slips day-to-day.[...]

Things went along OK for the first couple of days, but then I noticed some weakness and palsy in my right hand. At first the doctors thought it might be swelling from the IVs on the nerve, but after a Neuro exam and an MRI last night we found I'd had a small stroke. This was a known risk, because I had to stop the blood thinners I normally take so the operation wounds could clot. Apparently there was a rogue clot also.[...]

After reading about this horrendous surgical procedure, I expected to be pretty much out of it for a couple of days,  Not so!

I watched the third Warrior victory last night in my hospital room 8 hours after surgery completion, got about 5 hours of good sleep, and am somewhat  up and about this morning, sitting up in a chair for several hours.[...]

Marian was wheeled off to surgery at 7am. About 11:40, her entry on the status board in the waiting area changed from green (operating) to red (closing) and shortly after, Dr. Poultsides came out to tell us the operation was done, "she tolerated it very well" and the cancerous area was "small and well-contained". That bodes well for the future![...]