Beebe4

Wanted to say Happy Birthday to Greg. In honor of your birthday I am going to go eat dinner with your brother. We are going to Farallon, which I have eaten at before, last time I was in town. We might go for drinks afterwards.

Anyway, Happy Birthday… Yeah Come On!

So Pearl is coming “home” two days early. She will be living with Sherry (and I) for the next couple weeks until she feels healthy enough to go back home (where her bedroom and bathroom are on the 2nd floor). She has surpassed the expectation of the doctors as far as recovery and pain tolerance (no surprise to anyone that knows her) and they thing she will be ready to go tomorrow. Which is flippin’ great news.

These last few weeks have been crazy busy. My friend Lee is in town right now trying to setup the closing of her house, and I feel bad since I wasn’t able to help her out as much as I wanted to during this stressful time… I forgot to tell her that buying a house (especially the first one is one of the top 5 stressers in life). So I attended the home inspection on Sunday with her, then got recruited to help Shawn avoid city citation by getting the front of his house looking “uniform” and then at 7pm Shawn and I started the cable running project that I had been delaying for a long time so that Pearl could have a TV in her room while she recovers. We got it down before 9 with a little luck and some “oh so much fun” under the house crawling, and on the fly GT (and a little UVA) engineering / rigging.

I then got up this morning at 5am and had my lovely wife drop me off at the airport so that I could be at the San Francisco office before noon PST. It is now 7:18 pm and I am about to head out of the office and get some grub. I was stupid and forgot my cell phone at the house this morning so I will not get to talk to Sherry as much as I usually do.

The Kitchen is complete as far as what I had paid for, all that is left is priming and painting, and so other small finishing touches. But we are pleased, and very confident that we have greatly raised the value of our home, plus I love being able to talk while in the kitchen now… the hole was key.

I will try to post nightly while in SF, since I know my biggest fan checks this thing hourly.

GO PEARL GO!

but if it is true, it is interesting

IQ and Politics

The operation went well. I was lucky enough to get to hear Dr. Vargas tell Shelley, Shawn, Sherry and Pearl’s mother that the surgery went well. He believes that all of the tumor was removed and that there was no spreading to other organs. The lymph nodes and tumor have been sent to the labs and the pathology report is expected no later then Tuesday. From that we will receive the prognosis and the staging information.

The tumor was large.

Roughly 9 inches of her large intestine were removed and the majority of her rectum, but he was able to successfully connect everything back together so she will regain full use of her digestive system in around 2 months. She has a temporary colostomy while everything heals. The mass was so large that although the radiation had shrunk the tumor down to basically nothing the outer mass had grown large enough to act as a clamp on her intestines.

Previously we had been informed that her small intestine had fallen during treatment and might have been burned by the radiation, but that was not the case. So she should not see any effects of that which is huge news, because that was a potential life long pain (unbearable to most of us) that she would of had to endure.

So you can understand what we are waiting on it is important to understand TNM Staging (and that metastasis = spreading)…. for Pearl we know the T and M components.

TNM Definitions

Primary tumor (T)

T0: No evidence of primary tumor

T1: Tumor invades submucosa

T2: Tumor invades muscularis propria

T3: Tumor invades through the colon wall*

T4: Tumor directly invades other organs or structures

Regional lymph nodes (N)

NX: Regional nodes cannot be assessed

N0: No regional lymph node metastasis

N1: Metastasis in 1 to 3 regional lymph nodes

N2: Metastasis in 4 or more regional lymph nodes

Distant metastasis (M)

MX: Distant metastasis cannot be assessed

M0: No distant metastasis*

M1: Distant metastasis

Stage I

T1, N0, M0

T2, N0, M0

Stage II

T3, N0, M0

T4, N0, M0

Stage III

Any T, N1, M0

Any T, N2, M0

Stage IV

Any T, Any N, M1

* What Pearl has

Which gives us T3NXM0 so far, and stages the cancer as either II or III. From WebMD:

Stage II

Also called Dukes B colon cancer, the tumor extends through the muscular wall of the colon, but there is no cancer in the lymph nodes (small structures that are found throughout the body that produce and store cells that fight infection).

The 5-year survival rate for Dukes B colon cancer is 87%.

Stage III

Also called Dukes Stage C1 or Dukes Stage C2, the cancer has spread outside the colon to one or more lymph nodes (small structures that are found throughout the body that produce and store cells that fight infection). Tumors within the colon wall are classified as Dukes Stage C1, while tumors that have grown through the colon wall, and have spread, are classified as Dukes Stage C2.

The 5 year survival rate for Dukes C colon cancer is about 55%. Patients with one to four positive lymph nodes have a higher survival rate than people with more than five positive lymph nodes.

So we are basically praying for a negative result for the cancer presence in the lymph nodes. But in either case she has the upper hand and statistics in her favor… and if you know me, you know how much faith I put in numbers… they are a pure language 🙂 Plus I think my mom has St Peter himself taking a few minutes out of his day to offer up a prayer for Pearl.

All in all the doctor, Pearl, and the family and friends are pleased with yesterday. It was an excellent start to the road to remission.

Off to the hospital…. please keep us in your thoughts today.

I played poker last night at Hal’s house last night. It was my 2nd time playing poker with the boys (plus Erica) from work.

Poker really is a game of swings. I was never actually up last night, but I had fun and only lost $16. We started off with dealer’s call format, but after the female player left we transitioned into a No Limit Texas Hold’em tournament. I busted out first 😦 trying to play what I thought was “the hammer” but was informed after my “all-in” was called that they have to be unsuited to be the worst hand in poker. You can reference Hal’s blog to try and understand why there is foolish pride in bluffing (or somehow winning) a pot with the worst starting hand in poker.

But it was fun and hope to host one of them at our house soon.

Please go vote! I have just cast my ballot, and it honestly does feel good, given what is going on in the rest of the world. I heard someone on TV say something along the lines of “Lets show the world how the oldest and strongest democracy in the world does it” and I agree whole heartedly. It is the least you can do to honor those that have given their lives to give you this right. Take the 60 minutes of your life, watch one less episode of <insert stupid reality show here> and get it done. The excuse that “my vote doesn’t count due to the electoral college system” is WEAK. Get off your ass and make a difference.

Read up on an ESPN.com article about Football in America and it’s spotlight on Georgia Tech. Sad but true.

Had fun watching the kids tonight. We sat on the porch and handed out candy… it was a wonderful temperature and the kids were pretty cute. We stopped by Shawn and Reginia’s afterwards and hung out with some other couples for about an hour before calling it a night.

It was a great weekend with Sarah and Heidi. We had a blast… will not provide details, but lets just say that Ben ended up worshiping the porcelain goddess again. I am such a lightweight these days…. but I am not really complaining. I think they want to move to Norfolk now.

Most of you ask me this and I should have been doing this more regularly, but to be honest her treatment of chemo and radiation was such a non-event it was a good thing. We did recently find out that her intestines dropped and received some burning from the radiation as a result. This could cause her some problems, but it might also fix itself. Truth be told, we are just in waiting mode right now… her body is healing from the radiation… not something that anyone’s body enjoys going through, but her blood counts and other typical indicators to how well ones body is coping are all positive. She had to have two shots of Procrit (actually another similar drug) to ensure that all her levels were kosher.

She goes into surgery on November 4th, so take 15 – 30 seconds and concentrate on willing her to have “travel mercies” as she passes the mid-way point on her voyage to health. And feel free to amplify your thoughts with a prayer if you are lucky enough to be a believer.

To answer the second most asked question, Sherry is doing alright with it as well. Some days are sadder then others, and it breaks my heart to see her sad. But more days then not, she is the strong woman that her mother raised. It is pretty humbling when your wife has more emotional control then you do, as exampled at our wedding.

Pearl will be occupying the guest bed across the hall from us as she recovers and once the doc gives us the thumbs up we will plan the next few months of our life from there.