update #1

hello friends!

first let me say THANK YOU for the love you have shown me and my family. we are simply overwhelmed with the offers to help, to bring a meal, to watch the boys and to PRAY for us. we are so thankful for each one of you!

my pain has subsided and for that i am so grateful. the pain meds prevented me from sleeping much last night thanks to giving me the itchies (a known side effect)! i've been advised to take some benadryl to remedy this.

so we met with the obgyn this afternoon. the sonographer showed us the 10 cm growth that he called a dermoid. it has essentially gobbled up my whole left ovary. this type of growth is typically benign so we are breathing a sigh of relief about that! it most definitely needs to be surgically removed. due to its large size the obgyn couldn't promise us that it could be removed laproscopically (i probably misspelled that!) so it may need to be removed through an incision. laproscopically would mean outpatient, incision would mean 1-2 days in the hospital.

surgery has not been scheduled due to our "no insurance" situation. we have applied for medicaid (today) and should qualify for it, as far as we can tell. we have also pursued the JPS county hospital route. our obgyn was very sensitive to our financial situation and told us we basically have 2 options at this point:

1) wait for the acute pain to recur, go to the ER, explain that we've seen her and she is aware of my situation and they would proceed with surgery, assuming that we would indeed be covered by medicaid and they would "fast track" our application or

2) she is planning to speak to the CFO of the hospital tomorrow to see if we can get his permission to proceed with surgery under the assumption that medicaid would cover it, without waiting for me to be in acute pain again. she said she would call us tomorrow to inform us of his decision.

so i guess our PRAYER now is that the CFO would have pity on our case and approve my surgery and that surgery would take place THIS WEEK.

the doctor seemed to be under the assumption that IF he did approve it, nothing would likely occur until monday, a situation we would not prefer. i wish i could have had this surgery done YESTERDAY. i DO NOT want to experience that type of acute pain again, thank you very much!

but we are grateful for the possibility of it being covered by medicaid, or if not that, a discounted program through JPS. so we are trying to TRUST THE LORD with the timetable and see what He works out.

in the meantime, i am praying like crazy that the pain stays away, that i can keep some sort of food/drink down (i either vomit from pain or vomit from the pain meds!) and that my family can function with waiting for the next bomb to go off. it is so hard to know whether john should go back to work, if my mom should continue to come to our house, do i take the pain meds or not, will we make it through the next day or the next week without pain, etc, etc.

thanks again friends for your prayers! we really appreciate them!