John’s Health

I thought it was time to up date everyone about what John and I have been doing lately.  On may 30th Linda ended up in the hospital for a few days.It was because of her seizures. On June 1st John left for business in New Hampshire. Linda was still in the hospital. She was released June 3rd and was given a ride home by the Relief Society President. John returned home that night and was scheduled for surgery on Friday June 5th. Back in March of this year John had been complaining about pain in his lower right abdomen, so Linda called their doctor. He scheduled a CT scan. The scan came back showing a large mass in the fatty tissue of the abdomen, about the size and shape of a nerf football. He ordered a second scan because he found nodes on his lungs (very small),nothing there to worry about yet. So the doctor advised us to see a surgeon. We contacted our Stake President who is a surgeon to get a recommendation, we didn’t think he was doing surgery any more, but he was, so we made an appointment with him. It took us 7 weeks to get into see him. In the mean time we decided to get a second opinion, so we contacted another doctor. John was not impressed with him, so we waited for Dr. Blickenstaff. We finally got in and he recommended surgery and said that he could remove it. So on June 5th he went in to have it removed, only thing is the doctor  couldn’t remove it. Surgery took two and a half hours and all they got were three samples to send for a biopsy. The doctor told us that while he was doing surgery he tried to do three frozen biopsies and none were conclusive, so rather than perform a risky surgery he would wait to see what it was first, so they closed him back up. We waited about two weeks to get the results. When we did get the results back it was still unknown. They had actually sent it to two labs. By this time Linda had been doing a lot of checking and looking around and talking to people and got a surgeon at UCLA medical center. So they were off to UCLA to see if they could tell them anything else. We gave them the slides to do a biopsy at there lab and we had the CT scan and surgical notes. The doctor said it would take 1 to 2 weeks to get the results back from their lab and then maybe in 1 to 2 months they will do another CT scan to see if it is growing. Right now John is just home trying to recover from surgery dreading the day he will have to go back to work. He is so ready to retire.