Dear friend,

I'm writing today with grateful thanks in my heart for your prayers and love and concern. God is good, and so are you.

We were able to let you know from the hospital that surgery went well and of the death of the late great Sammy Sarcoma.  I am so thankful to God for the wonderful doctors he has brought into my life over the past weeks of this journey.  Dr Richie Gillespie, the surgeon, did an amazing job, spending five hours meticulously dissecting out the nerves, muscles and blood vessels in my forearm and detaching what she could from the tentacles of the encroaching sarcoma.

When she came to see us after surgery, Dr Richie Gillespie told us that although initially it looked as though all the cells around the edge of the tumor were dead cells, when the pathologist looked at more slides he found a few live cells.  Although this is disappointing, it does not necessarily mean that Sammy Sarcoma will have the strength for resurrection or that there will be any live Sammy Juniors in my lungs or elsewhere.  We have to wait a week or so to find out exactly what the pathologist finds when he slices and dices the tumor and looks at sections under the microscope.  Future treatment regimes will depend very much on his findings.  

We have won two battles, but the war isn't quite over yet! Please don't stop praying...My days at the moment are preoccupied with the minutiae of post operative recovery.  Hard to explain it all, but, if you like, try an experiment... Spend a day when you don't use your "main" arm at all.  This will give you a very good idea of the things that I'm finding hard right now.  I can promise you a fun day! If you take up my challenge, please let me know how you get on. There will be a prize for the best "printable" response!

Have you ever accidentally stapled a finger? Right now I have fifty staples stretching eleven inches from my elbow to my wrist. I'll leave the rest to your imagination! I remember writing during the chemotherapy and radiation to tell you that every day tasks took lots of energy. I'm back to that point again, in this post operative time. Just the process of getting up each day uses up almost all my energy for the day. This morning Val helped me wash and dress and we changed the dressing on the forearm. Then, quite unexpectedly, I sat down, weak as a kitten, and cried. I was done in! However, you know I'm truly grateful to God that I still have my arm, and will have function at least in my index finger and thumb in my right hand.  Please pray with me for good healing along the full length of the scar, and for a rapid return to normal energy levels.

Thank you so much,

With lots of love and, for the moment, awkward hugs,

June.