For those of you asking for news about my Dad, rather than write this about 18 times, I thought I'd share the details here.

When I got home from work I found an email from LW, asking what happened, and I realized that I should have heard, so I called. Mom answered Dad's cell phone from the examining room (he was delayed in surgery and was running behind), and asked me if I had any questions, and when the doctor heard that I had asked for the details of the pathology report, he actually asked Mom if he could tell me himself (of course her telling him I was a neurobiology professor helped, I'm sure...She did! I heard her). What follows is what he told me himself.

Such a cool doctor!

So here's the deal. The mass is about 2 centimeters across, and about 1.1 millimeters of it is adenocarcinoma, so it is a small lesion, and a very small percentage of it is cancer. The doctor seems to think it's just a polyp that went bad, so to speak. It's located near the junction of the bile duct and the duodenum, although I'm not sure if it is in the ampulla vater or the duodenum itself. It doesn't appear to have spread out of the intestine itself. Here's some great information on ampullary cancer. I especially like that last part about up to 90% 5-year survival rate. I am determined to be optimistic. The doctor seemed to be.

He plans a Whipple operation, which used to be a death sentence, but with laparoscopic surgery and minimally invasive techniques and specialized training, the mortality rate is about the same as other surgeries, so I'm not too worried. The doctor said he thinks it's likely that when he removes it, there won't be anything else to worry about. I'm praying that's the case

He has a PET scan scheduled for tomorrow as there are a couple of other small lesions, but they don't appear to be neoplastic, one on the liver and one on the lung. The doctor told me it's likely the former is a hemangioma and the latter is a TB scar. There's no reason to suspect they're evil. In any case, he's going to take a look while he's got Dad opened up.

Hell, by the time you get to 71 you've got all kinds of funny things going on in your body, right?

Mom will tell me more when they leave the doctor's office.

Moral of the story: Get every intestinal bleed checked out, all the way from your input to your output. Don't let the doctor say, "Oh, it's probably stress or an ulcer, here's some Nexxium". They found this tumor early because it was bleeding and they scanned him from the mouth down.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 05:31 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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..I kissed the only man I'll ever love for the very first time.

To this:

I'm the luckiest girl in the world to be able to spend every day with my best friend and my lover, to still look at you in amazement that you and I are still joined at the hip after 3 colleges, 2 graduate schools, and 1 tour in the army. Not to mention two moves across the country, chronic illness, and a crazy allergic puppy.

Thanks for making the last eleven years wonderful, even when everything else was miserable.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 08:57 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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As many of you are aware, my DH is a 7th and 8th grade teacher. 12 and 13 year olds are little more than raging bags of hormones.

Well, evidently yesterday he took away a note that one of the girls had written to a boy, including the boy's partial response. He left it in the kitchen this morning and all I can say is that I'm glad I wasn't eating or drinking when I read it...

I hope like hell he read it out loud to the class. I present it here for you, spelling and grammar mistakes intact, with only the names changed to protect the innocent.... and not so innocent.

(imagine cute, rounded girly writing, as only 12 and 13 year old girls can do)

Dear [Boy],
I really am sorry. Are you sure your not upset, because you turned all red. I'm sorry for annoying you with all these notes. I am confused on who I like well I'm not confused about you,; but I'm in a situation right now.[emphasis mine-Ed.]

Here's his response, written lower on the same page:

lol Im always red and Im pissed off at Mr. [DH].

I suspect that there would have been more but that the paper was removed at this point.....

I will continue to post such notes as he finds them and brings them home, that is, until he tells me to stop.

I was disappointed though. When we were in 7th and 8th grade, we used to fold the notes up in very complicated ways to make envelopes or flaps, or even into the shape of an arrow. This was only folded in half twice. Kids today have no sense of creativity.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 12:36 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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This post from Contagion reminded me of a story that's made the rounds in our family.

In the early sixties, my dad's best friend was a teacher and coach, and he took a job for a year or two at a college just outside of Portland, OR. A few months after he moved up there, Dad decided to visit.

Now Dad's friend lived in a house that was surrounded by brush and trees, but supposedly there was a lawn in the middle of all that.

When Dad arrived at the house, after driving 15 hours to Portland, he was greeted by this mess.... After a few hours rest, the 2 of them rented a heavy-duty lawn mower and attacked. Everything was going along smoothly until...THUMP. Dad looked up to find a tree in front of him. A somewhat mature tree with at least a couple of years' growth that had been hidden in the high grass. Ok, he thought, I'll just mow around it.... until THUMP.

Yep, you guessed it. Another tree. About the same size. All in all they found 7 actual trees hidden in the grass and took out as many or more that were just starting to root.

Eventually, they took those trees out too, but I never heard that they fought back or died in a pulsating pile......

Posted by: caltechgirl at 01:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I love my honey. One of the best things about him is that he is the one who is slow to anger, thinks about what he wants to say, and rarely gets into a huff.

He's working up to a fit right about now. After being busy with school and such, he's finally getting caught up on the news.

I know most people are getting tired of the Sheehan story, but what he's going to have to say will probably be worth reading. Look for it in the next couple of days....

I think this has gotten personal.....

Posted by: caltechgirl at 07:58 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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This post stays on top today.

Today, April 24th, is the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide.

I have so many things to say, so many emotions, I will say just two:

First, why is it that so many Americans know nothing of a genocide that killed nearly as many as Hitler's reign of terror over the Jews in Europe? Like the Jews, the Christian Armenians were pursued and killed by the Muslim turks for no reason other than their religion. It was wholesale slaughter. Men, and young boys were murdered outright, women, girls, and the elderly were forced to march for miles. Most died along the way. Armenian girls were sold into slavery in turkish homes and were raped by turkish soldiers. Yet almost no one here knows the story...

Second, a personal story. My father's stepmother was already a widow with 7 children at the time of the genocide. Her children were young, but not babies. She knew that they would never survive without some kind of plan. So she disguised herself and her children as turkish arabs, and moved from town to town posing as an arab widow. She made what little living she could scrape together by sewing for wealthy turkish families, all the while hiding her true identity. Over the course of a couple of years she and her children crossed turkey on foot, and eventually came under the protection of some Christian arabs who helped them escape to Lebanon. Eventually, they made their way to France, and some of them, including my father's stepmother, made it to the US.

Their sacrifice deserves to be remembered.
For more on the genocide, go here and here.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 11:42 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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