Sunday, January 31, 2010

Date Night

The past 2 days have been very quiet in comparison to the past couple of days for me.  Friday was my last day of work for a little while and then my main man Ern and his family came to cook dinner at the house for Jenny and I.  Playing with the kids and hanging out with Ern and Candice was a great distraction. Our good friends John & Christy also stopped by for a quick visit.

Today we woke up and met my mom, Steven, Haley, my uncle Rick, and aunt Jody for lunch at Stax Omega (not nearly as good as the Original but we had to compromise).  Tonite Jenny took me on a date to The Lazy Goat where we got to enjoy each others company for awhile. 

Tomorrow will be a day filled with cleaning the house and watching some sports before I have to have some tests run on Monday. 

Although this has been one of the toughest times for me, knowing that I have so much love and support has helped to give me the strength to fight though this.  I can't thank everyone enough for everything that you have done.  I know Jenny and our families feel the same way. 

We will post something again on Mon. after all of the testing is finished.

Thanks Again,

Tim

Friday, January 29, 2010

First Oncologist Appt.

Today we went to the Cancer Center of the Carolinas to meet with an oncologist in order to get some additional information about what we're looking at and to make sure we are taking the right steps as we move forward. Dr. Edenfield was amazing at explaining exactly what we are looking at, where the mass is located and how the Sigmoid Colectomy will be performed. He also explained what options we may be looking at after surgery. Unfortunately he did also share some bad news with us. Tim's pathology results came back and confirmed that he definitely does have colon cancer.

He informed us that the tests Tim will have on Monday, coupled with the surgery itself as well as the pathology tests done on the resected portion of his colon will determine what stage Tim's cancer is in. From that point we will find out what the next steps will be for treatment. We're really hoping that it will be stage 1 which means Tim will not require any Chemotherapy and the surgery will take care of everything.

Although we did receive bad news at this visit it did make us feel a little bit better about what we are facing. Dr. Edenfield  has a positive outlook that is contagious and helped us to get a much better grip on everything. Our next big hurdle will be all of the testing done on Monday and the results those tests will ultimately bring back. We're still hoping for the best and know that we will get through all of this thanks to the tremendous support and incredible medical team we have backing Tim up.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Background

First of all we want to thank everyone for the tremendous amount of love and support that all of you have offered in the past two days. We are incredibly humbled by all of this kindness and are so grateful for it.

Tim has had problems with acid reflux for some time now and decided to get scoped in order to figure out what the problem might be. During his colonoscopy this past Monday the doctor found a mass in his lower colon. Dr. Idris recommended that he go see a colon surgeon immediately as he suspected Tim may have colon cancer. We went to go see Dr. Robbins on Monday afternoon who recommended that Tim have a resection of his lower colon next Wednesday. His words in regard to whether or not this may be cancer were that "Colon cancer is like your Aunt Mary. When you see her, you know her." Since that time, Mr. Bright has been in touch with the Chief of Surgery at GHS who said that the use of the word cancer may have been used a little earlier than necessary. He gave us some great insight as to what to expect with the surgery and the recovery period.

On Monday Tim will be going to Memorial for multiple tests to make sure he is ready to go through the surgery as well as a CT scan which we hope will get us more information. He will go home for Monday night and Tuesday while they review all of the results. Once he is cleared through that process he will go into surgery around 2:30PM on Wednesday afternoon. During the surgery they plan to remove 1 - 1.5 ft of Tim's affected lower colon. They will perform an end-to-end anastomosis where they will reattach the two healthy ends of Tim's colon to one another. The entire surgery should take approximately an hour to perform.

Tim will remain in the hospital for 4-7 days after the surgery in order to make sure his colon begins working properly again. We hope that this surgery will take care of everything and will allow us all to return back to our normal lives.

Thank you again for all of your support through this difficult time, it means the world to all of us.