The only Holiday Message I have time to send.

Merry Christmas everyone. We are doing OK.

Janet & I only want one present and if we get it, we will be thrilled to have it be our only Christmas and Birthday Present for the next 500 yrs. In future years, just give us an “Present already delivered 12-25-12.” voucher.

That precious gift would be for a skilled surgeon, preferably laser surgeon, to do his or her best to fix her adhesions and anything else that they can while they are in there. All we have ever asked is for them to try. Just go have a look and let us see the film.

The laparoscopic surgeons, “see” with a tiny video camera and it is easy and very useful to save the footage.

We have been trying for months. Our first surgeon was scheduled to do it, but at the last minute, he backed out. Supposedly because an Oncologist friend of his told him that the cancer patients are sometimes tricky and he should not do it.

Our brilliant, kind and generally wonderful Dr. Bob (Eslinger) at Reno Integrative Medical Center called the first surgeon and said, doctor to doctor that Janet’s safety was in extreme peril if no one corrected her small bowel obstruction (SBO) very soon, and there were two choices. The best is take a small risk and at least have a look. If it was hopeless, we understand and will be finally able to make informed decisions on what to do next, like resume conventional chemo or go to Hospice.

The worst is that if the SBO was not fixed very, very soon, then Janet was pretty certain to die from it, not the cancer.

AND that as Doctors we took an oath to try to help people. Why not get started, at least trying, to help this woman.

The first surgeon said, “OK if I can have my Oncologist friend in the OR with me.”

That sounded great, but after a few days of keeping us on pins and needles waiting for word on what day the surgery would be he canceled again! He chose the ‘let Janet die’ choice. Amazing!

A friend said that we needed to stress that we would sign waivers. Have you lawyer draw them up.

We have two more possible surgeons on the radar at the moment and we will stress the waiver, and the terrible cost of doing nothing, as hard as we can. Please wish us luck.

We went to see the one that we accidentally discovered lives right here in Reno on Monday, Dec 24.

We got to the point where you tell your story to a Nurse or Physician’s Assistant, etc and we were to wait. The doctor was coming in from surgery and would be here in 20 mins.

About 10 min later, “There has been an emergency at the surgery and we will call you on Wednesday to set up a new appointment.”

We pointed out that Janet is becoming an emergency and they promised to get her in very soon. On their lunch break if necessary.

We were crushed to say the very least.

I need to stop writing this to go back to work on having all of the relevant medical records ready for the new doctors to review. But, I wanted to bring you up to date.

BTW, I really do proof read, but when I read something again days later, I still find typos or confusing word choices. (The just plain bad grammar, is not anything that I will fix at my advanced age. Get used to it. Wink.)

But, if you catch a typo or have a kindly worded suggestion, please email me at svalegria
which is our hotmail address. Use our gmail address if you know it, but I prefer not to post it here.

If this is your first time here and you want to subscribe. I do not profit from that in any way. It just means that you get an email when I add info. That added info happens at very erratic times and many like to do that rather than check back constantly. Its up to you.

My posting on Dec 23, 2012 has my best idea of how to subscribe. The title of that post is, “Janet is stronger and happier, but still has room for improvement.” Or, just read on down the page.

I need to stop for now. There were several Caregiver type interruptions just while writing this. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Solstice, Season’s Greetings and whatever you prefer. And Have a Great New Year also.

I will try to find time to alert our 260 or so email friends, but is is as I have time and who is first is not an indicator of our love for one person over another. Just which name was on the list last year. And I can promise that I will forget some dear friend(s). It is only over work on my part. Please help by telling the mutual friends that you know, how to find our Blog. Thanks.

PS: I am discovering a problem in how our email deals with bulk mailings (outbound). It pretty much guarantees that I am going to miss some good friends, send mail to people that we hardly know and send many lucky souls several of the same thing. So, if you get 5 copies, just send 4 of them on to the people I forgot.

Hey, I’m sorry, but doing this on the quick, between the many Caregiver things ain’t so easy. Happy New Year.

What do you want to bet that all of our friend will forgive me? I hope so.

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