A HUGE SETBACK IN JEANIE'S RECOVERY

This is an email I sent out a few minutes ago just letting all the friends and family know what's going on. Thanks for checking in.

Hello Everyone,
I sure am sad to have to be writing this message, but there has been a complication in my Mom's recovery. They chest expander the Doctors inserted in the left side of her chest is not healing properly and she has to undergo surgery tomorrow. If you've followed the blog the last couple of weeks, you've probably seen the many issues she's had during her recovery. Right now, their main concern is an area on the left side of her chest that is alarmingly red and obviously not right. The doctor wants to do surgery on her again tomorrow to explore what the problem is. He has ordered a new expander to replace the existing one, if that's where the problem lies. He feels the sense of urgency to do this operation immediately to try and resolve the issue before it gets much worse and will try an squeeze her in to the busy hospital schedule tomorrow. My Mom and Dad received a confirmation phone call for their appointment time for tomorrow...they are supposed to arrive at 11AM. As I mentioned before, he's trying to just squeeze her in whenever he can commandeer the operating room, so I don't really have a true time frame on when the actual surgery will be. I will blog from my cellphone whenever there's news, just as I did the last time.

This is really hard on Mom...and the rest of us. We're doing our best to make arrangements so that we can all be with her as much as possible, but there was no vacancy for us to take our RV down there this time and the hotels are so far away we might as well just be home (plus that's a little easier on all of our critters too). Dad is planning on staying all night with her the first night, and we'll all play it by ear from there. Mom and Dad are packing right now.

None of us expected this at all. Mom's biggest fear right now is that there will be a problem with the expander and that the Doctor will just choose not to put in the new one until she heals more. I sure hope that's not the case, but it seems like every time she hears about a worst-case scenario, it ends up being her story. She thinks that she's just doomed to have every negative side-effect possible and so far she's been right. I just don't get it.

Mom will be in the hospital at least until Saturday. The Doctor says he's not going to release her until the redness is gone. Her recovery from this surgery might be exactly the same as her first surgery, which was 6 weeks ago. She literally had JUST started feeling like she was on the road to recovery. Now, she gets to start back at square one.

Please keep her in your heart and thoughts. I'll keep you updated at www.cowboytuff.blogspot.com throughout the day tomorrow.

Thanks,
Alissa