World = Upside Down

So first, this is a brief guest blog (from Katie's husband Dan). I've got some difficult news to share....these last few days have been the hardest of our lives. Last Wednesday, I got a scary call from Katie that just a few minutes beforehand, she was trying to speak to Miles and no words came out - just gibborish. Then she tried to text me, and....more of the same. So she called 911 and by the time I got home, the EMT's were ready to take her in to the hospital.

The initial doctors gave us reassurances that it was probably migraine-related, but they did an MRI for precautionary reasons. Then we got the devastating news that she had a mass in her brain. This was that kind of out-of-the-blue experience that we thought only happens in the movies. You tend to not even comprehend that these things can happen to you.

There were some good indicators that it was toward the benign end of the scale, but they can never really know until they remove it and do the full labwork. So they took her into surgery (brain surgery!) early on Friday morning. BTW, it took me the longest time to be able to use the word tumor. I think I was in partial denial that 'my wife had a brain tumor' - even writing that now is still difficult. Just a few days ago, our lives were completely normal.

Anyway, she was simply awesome. To make sure they weren't doing damage to her speech during surgery, they had to do an awake craniotomy. You can probably figure out what that means (awake + cranium + your imagination!!). They removed the vast majority of the tumor, but they had to stop operating when her speech was affected. She's been recovering in the ICU, and they just moved her to a normal room today. Believe it or not, she might be home tomorrow.

The next step is getting pathology results - which will determine what happens from here - but will be at least a few more days.

The outpouring of people praying for Katie has been astounding. I can't express how thankful we are. Please pray for her continued recovery and a benign result. And.......she'll be back soon!