So all the pre-op testing has been done.   Blood has been donated by Ira (Dad) and is ready and on standby.   We have done everything we can do now it’s time to hand off our baby girl.   Going in the only thing I prayed as she is walking in was God please let her be able to walk out.  Not yet knowing what the next 7 1/2 hours of surgery and next week of testing would reveal.

We checked in and went into get pre-op room to take vitals and answer all the questions we have already answered a hundred times.   While they were asking us questions Katie the child life worker came in.   She sat on the floor and showed Audrey her anesthesia mask.  Then she showed her a bag of different scents she could add to your mask and stickers that she could decorate it with.

Audrey picked watermelon and Katie and Audrey spread the gel in the mask while we talked to the doctors and nurses.   We changed Audrey into her hospital outfit but she refused to put on the hospital socks and chose her pink Minnie Mouse shows.   It was time for her to go back so we took one last picture and Katie, the nurses and the doctors set off for the OR.  You advised them to get her under before they tried to take off the shoes.

They said the surgery could take 7 to 9 hours.  The doctor had gotten insurance authorization to use the CO2 laser which should lesson the collateral damage cause by the tumor removal and lessen the loss of function.

We started one of the longest waits of our lives.  We had breakfast in the cafeteria, walked around the hospital, had lunch and even had a few friends drop by to break up the time.  My watched showed we walked about 4 miles that day.  During the procedure every couple of hours or so the OR nurse would call and let us know things were progressing and her vitals were stable.   Finally we got the call from the OR nurse that the operation is finished and they surgeon needs to talk to us in the OR waiting room.

The surgeon came out and we know him well enough to know it wasn’t good news.   The tumor wasn’t one of the couple tumors he thought it might be.  The tumor came from the muscle and had pushed and ripped its way into the spinal cord.  This created a bunch of hard to remove scar tissue which was only able to be cut with scissors.  He couldn’t tell us anything about what function he expected post-surgery because of this.  They biopsied the tumor twice during the surgery and it was teaming with malignant cells.  No doubt now she was fighting cancer.   Now the question is no longer only will she walk out of the hospital but what kind of fight are we looking at.

Within a few minutes we were with Audrey in the PICU and trying to process what we have learned.   We were confused, scared, pissed off and any other emotion you can think of all at one time.  Our brains hurt as we were trying to comprehend what was going on and what the future might look like.   The first thing you think about is the worst case scenario.   What if the cancer has spread?  What if it’s in other parts of her body or even her brain?  Then what?   For now we needed to concentrate on what was in front of us.  Audrey has just successfully gotten through a 7 hour surgery and is in the PICU stable and on the ventilator.    We started our first night of attempting to sleep.  (We weren’t very successful)