A Loooooong Day in Charlottesville

We went over to Charlottesville Monday afternoon so we could check out where we had to go for Ray’s 8 AM appointment on Tuesday with Dr. David Jones, the UVA surgeon, who—we hoped—would remove his lung cancer.

What we discovered was that a lot of walking is required (not one of MY strengths), but that--if we got to the West Complex early enough, we might be able to find a parking place. So we got up at 6:30 AM on Thursday and were at the West Complex by 7 AM, and there were parking spaces. We then found a cafeteria in the building and I ate some breakfast. Ray decided to keep going with his “mini-fast”, eating nothing until lunchtime (which turned out to be a major mistake). Then we made our way up to the 4^th floor.

Dr. Jones’ male nurse, named Andy (a good sign), took Ray’s vital signs, then a really nice young new doctor, Paris Butler by name, took Ray’s history. Then Dr. Jones appeared and told Ray that, if a breathing test and stress test came back OK, he would give us a date for surgery.

So, off Ray went for his breath test. After the breath test, which had been scheduled for 9:30 AM, we returned to Dr. Jones’ office where we learned that Ray has very good breathing function, so Dr. Jones will remove the upper lobe of Ray’s left lung on Thursday, Jan 28. He will be in the University Hospital for 4-6 days, and if there are no cancer cells in nearby lymph nodes, that will be the end of it. Except, of course, for periodic return checkups. We won’t know the TIME of the surgery until the afternoon of Jan 27.

After we got the word about the surgery, we learned that Dr. Jones’ secretary had also scheduled a stress test for 11:30 AM, so we went over to the Cardiac Center at the hospital. We were there long enough to make friends with some of the other relatives of folks getting stress tests, and one lady asked Ray’s name and said she would put him on her prayer list.

By the time the stress test was over, about 3 PM, Ray—who, remember, had chosen not to eat breakfast—was starving. As was I, who HAD eaten breakfast. So we went to the eating area, and shot our healthy foods efforts by snarfing down a cheeseburger AND French fries. And it was SOOOOOO good! The next two hours were spent pre-registering for the upcoming surgery. We finally started home a little after 5 PM. To say that we were tired when we got home is an understatement.

Ray’s PET scan from the middle of December had also showed what Dr. Jones calls “a hot spot” at the “caput cecum” in the lower right abdomen, so Ray will also have a colonoscopy on Jan 21 to see what’s going on there. Dr. Jones said that these are frequently false positives and he wasn’t really concerned about it. Let’s hope!

OK, that’s it for now. Next post will probably be after Jan 21^st. Every day, in every way, we’re getting better and better and it’s all thanks to your good thoughts and prayers, so keep ‘em coming!