January 27th Surgery Update

The morning started off a little tense as, I (Linda) forgot my cell phone as we had left for the hospital. This caused us to have to turn around and go back to the house. Tensions we high to begin with and this added a little stress. I told Doug that I forgot the phone so he could be angry at me and I would be his focus so he would not be consumed by thoughts of the upcoming surgery. He laughed, tensions eased up and he told me, “Well there goes Toni’s prayer for a safe, calm and uneventful ride to the hospital”, as he grabbed the handle when I turned the corner. Okay, so I was in a little bit of a hurry.

Doug’s surgery went really well. As I have stated before we continue to see the Lord go before us as Dr. Manning shared before surgery if we did not find the tumor when we did and remove it, Doug would have only had two weeks to a month to live. So what we thought was a bad head cold and sinus infection was the Lord going before Doug to have a CT scan and MRI done to locate the brain mass.

Overall the surgery took about 4 hours with an hour + before and after for pre-op and recovery. The 18 faithful stayed the course and we were all there to hear Dr. Manning tell us that Doug was doing great and as he left him in the recovery room he was awake, able to count fingers, wiggle his toes, and carry on a conversation. Dr. Manning told us the tumor was larger than we had originally thought and it was also embedded as deep as it could within the brain. From what the doctor indicated it was bigger than a golf ball, but smaller than a tennis ball. Doug was then sent up ICU to spend the night.

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support.

Linda