Walter Pulled Through

Oh yes! He made it through surgery. He made it through post-op. Through a night in Cardiac ICU, CICU. Back upstairs to Telemetry, the heart unit. Slowly but surely they've pulled out this tube and that, let him take off his oxygen cannula here and there. Our bad hearts always complicate our other surgeries, so he's on a heart monitor.

He still gets a gazillion breathing treatments a day, and they put him back on IV fluids today. Hmmm. The chest tube is still in, draining and draining.

But they decided to transport him to his next stop, a Respite Care place.

And the first news on the tumor came back.

They got it very, very early. Stage 1A. Very small, almost too small to operate on him. Walter didn't know which kind it is - we hear there are several. But if it were the awful one, small cell, they'd be throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it.

Which they aren't. He won't have to do chemotherapy. He may have to do some radiation therapy, but not for very long.

It looks like this awful thing, lung cancer, might have a good outcome after all. Am I happy? Is he? Oh my goodness, YES!

You know what else? If we hadn't broken up, they would not have caught it so early. Perhaps not for a long, long time. It was only through an odd series of coincidences that they gave him a chest x-ray. And that he agreed to have it. See, he'd just had one three weeks before.

That x-ray showed nothing there at all.