Stella

Well, for those of you who have been wondering, we took Stella to the OR today for surgery. She is the patient I wrote about that I feared had ovarian cancer. She was very stoic as she came into theatre and said she was ready for whatever we found. We prayed together before she went to sleep and I, especially, prayed for wisdom. I knew the possibility of her needing multiple things done was high and wasn't sure how much her frail little body would tolerate (she weighed in at about 80 lbs - that included the 3 liters of fluid she had in her abdomen). Thankfully, I picked up a new visiting surgeon yesterday. Dr. Ben Sawer and his wife Cathy are from Canada and so nice. We are so thankful to have them here until Dr. Rhodes returns.
So, Dr. Ben and I opened her up. As expected, there was a lot of ascites (fluid). So, we suctioned all of that and I felt in her pelvis, expecting to find a large mass. Her uterus and both ovaries were completely normal! Interesting, we thought. So, we headed to the next most obvious source - her liver (although it had looked normal on ultrasound). It, in fact, was completely normal. As were her stomach, pancreas, and kidneys. Okay, we thought, let's run the bowel. There sat the culprit - we found a tumor of the small bowel, which is exceedingly rare (Dr. Ben has only seen 3 other cases in his 30+ years as a general surgeon). So, I yelled out to Drew "Drew, this is your case now". He scrubbed in and he and Dr. Ben resected about 20cm of her small bowel and put the healthy bowel back together.
So, she had complete surgical resection and we pray that she will do well. At any rate, she should have a much better prognosis than she would have had with ovarian cancer, and won't need any further treatment right now.
So, bwana asifui (praise the Lord!)! Thank you all for your prayers. Please continue to pray for her as she recovers.