First of all, thanks again to everyone who has told me they’re thinking of my Grandma. It really means the world to me. I have a couple of new updates on how she’s doing.

First of all, she is slowly getting her strength back, but it’s taking awhile. Getting up and walking a short distance wears her out for the rest of the day. But, she is up and walking, so that’s great news!

But, it seems like one step forward, two steps back…. she gets to go in for another short surgery tomorrow morning. The drainage from her surgery site has been getting more and more, and the doctor thinks she may have developed an abcess. 3o minute surgery to clean it out and that will hopefully resolve that issue.

The bigger issue is worse. I found out last night that the doctors don’t think they got all of the cancer. When they cut away the jaw bone last week, they thought they had enough to get what they call “clear margins” meaning they cut far enough away from the cancer to ensure they got all of it. To be certain, they biopsied the bone. Unfortunately, the cut edges showed cancer cells. So, she will have to have even more surgery and more bone cut away. With this particular cancer, and that it is actually in the bone, chemo and radiation won’t do any good. The only way to get rid of it is to cut it out. But the doctors have pretty much flat out said that until Grandma gets her strength back up, they won’t do this surgery as she wouldn’t make it through. She’s just too weak. They’re waiting about 10 days, and reassesing then.

Please continue to pray for my Grandma. Pray for strength and healing for her. For wisdom for the doctors. And please pray for my Mom and Aunt Chris. They’ve been with Grandma in the hospital since the start and need strength and patience to be able to be strong for her.

I am so glad that we will be able to take the time to go to Idaho in two weeks to be with my family. I wish I could go now, and the waiting is hard.

Thanks again for the prayers and kind words!

And I promised I would post a picture from last week’s family reunion. I didn’t forget, I just wanted to make sure the family had a chance to view the proofs. So, here they are. All 29 of them plus Buddy the dog! They were a joy to work with. I loved the color-coded families! They all seemed to get a kick out of how I was organizing them. “Purple family, I need you over here. Red family you get to sit down here. Green dad, you need to move to the side.” I say whatever works!!!! *LOL* While it was easy getting everyone arranged… you don’t want to know how long I spent in editing, going through and opening eyes, switching smiles, and what not. There is a lot of work spent behind the scenes, that’s for sure! I hope I continue to be lucky and have families who are as much fun as they are!

Just a quick update on how my Grandma is doing. She gets to go back to surgery this evening. She apparently pulled out her drainage tube out of the incision in her jaw last night. The doctor is going to reinsert it and will probably debride (clean out) the incision area. He may have to remove a graft as it hasn’t been getting the blood supply that it should have been. The graft came from her leg, but the leg it came from was the one that was affected by her spinal stroke several years back. I suppose they choose that leg so that her stronger leg remained strong. But she has had some severe cramping in the leg that they took the grafts from. Today, it took nearly two hours of massage and two doses of morphine to calm her leg down enough to let her rest.

Yesterday she was sitting up and actually was standing for a short bit as part of her physical therapy. Hopefully tonight’s surgery won’t affect her progress in that area.

Thanks to all of those who have been keeping her in their thoughts and prayers. It has been needed, helpful, and greatly appreciated!

Not much at all that’s new. It was a beautiful day today, so I took the boys to the park and let them play a bit. I was having fun watching them and playing with my camera. I did put it down and play with them until daddy came home for lunch.

The last one was a special request from my Grandma. She sent the boys some sandals and wanted me to take pics of their little feet. Of course we can do that!

My Grandma is actually currently in the hospital right now. On Monday, June 30th, she had a surgery to remove cancer from her jawbone. It was supposed to be a 10 hour surgery, but it went really well and only lasted 7 hours. The doctors have no reason to believe any cancer is left, but will discuss other options like chemo and what not later. She just got out of ICU today, but will have a feeding tube for about another week. She’s been fighting a pretty high fever the last few days, but it finally came down and they let her out of ICU. She’s on the 8th floor at the hospital, and the nurses say she’ll have an excellent view for the fireworks tomorrow night! If anyone would like to add her to their thoughts and prayers for a speedy recovery and to aid her in the fight against her cancer, that would be awesome. Prayers work and are greatly appreciated.

Thanks again everyone!