Surgery Day

Hello to all. I'm Christina's husband, John. I just want to update everyone.

Christina and I arrived at the hospital a little after 8am. Her mom and dad were already there greeting us at the door. We waited for about 20 minutes before they called Christina in to be prepped. By a little after 9am, she was allowed to have visitors until surgery time. Her sister, Mary DePriest had arrived around this time as well. Surgery was supposed to start around 10am. As of yesterday, our surgeon had thought it was at 10:30 until she was informed 10am by her staff. She tried to adjust the schedule the best that she could and ended up arriving just before 11am. The waiting before surgery started was hard for me. I was very anxious during the wait. Christina was in good spirit. During the wait, a doctor explained everything that was going to happen and the state she would be in when she woke. We were actually in the same prep room as when she had her breast reduction surgery (I guess it's the plastic surgeon's favorite room.)

The bilateral mastectomy was performed first by Dr. Suppas. She thought it would take around 75 minutes, but it took approximately 105 minutes. Everything went great. She removed a couple of nodes for testing reasons which came back clean (YAY!!!!!!) The good breast was removed first and the plastic surgeon was able to begin on that side while Dr. Suppas removed the breast with cancer. I'm really grateful for Dr. Suppas. If there is a time when you want to see someone confident in what they do, it's a surgeon. She has that in spades.

Dr. Puckett is her plastic surgeon again. He was done by a little before 2pm. Everything went well with his part too. Two of his assistants were finishing the surgery, while he updated me. We are actually in his care now for the next few weeks. I had to wait until Christina was fully awake before I would see her.

I finally got to see her again at 3:38pm. Christina was in an intense amount of pain. The surgeon wants nothing to move, so she is bandaged really tight around her chest. She cannot take a big breath because of it, which she really wants to do because of the pain it is causing. For the first few minutes I was with her, her eyes were streaming with tears from the pain. They have given her some morphine, percocet, and vallium. She can only get so much until she has eaten, which she can't really do until she is moved to the in-patient room.

She is currently in room 4411 at Women's and Children's Hospital. I started this post around 5pm, but because of everything that's happened since getting to the room, I'm finishing it now after 9:30pm. I'll save some of that for another post. She was happy to finally eat her first meal of the day. Breakfast at 6:30pm (YAY!!!! again, she loves breakfast) - french toast, sausage patties, cinnamon roll, chocolate milk, and Pepsi. She was happy for that moment.

You may not have heard much from me before, and I may not have thanked some of you yet, but I'm really grateful for all the thoughts and prayers for Christina and our family. We cannot thank you enough, but we will pay and pray it forward for you. We have seen God's love through your acts and words, and we hope you are all blessed tenfold.

Love to all,

John