The news is pretty good! And we have a surgery date!

I'm so happy to be writing this! We are home, just minutes ago, and the news is good so far! Of course, when it comes to medical dangers, I see glasses as half empty, not half full. This makes me feel like I'm safer, because I feel like if I can hunt out the dangers early, I can fight back better. The downside of my attitude is that I appear, perhaps, not to take the proper amount of joy in good news, always thinking, "Well, yes, THAT news is good, but what about all we DON'T know?"

So please, you optimists out there, if you feel yourself taking offense at my yes-but qualities, know that I came by it honestly. :) I had some blindsiding fatal medical disasters happen in my family as a kid, so I always think a big boogie man is going to jump out. In other words, try to forgive my attitude!

Back to the plot.

First, they did NOT do a body scan of any kind, as we expected, so there is no news as to whether the cancer has done anything dangerous.

However! The small area they did scan, around his bladder, showed NO spread to the lymph nodes they could see! The Dr. said this was a very good thing, and that the chemo seemed to have held the cancer back.

But they won't know the answers to the deeper questions until after surgery. So I, personally,am not going to feel completely safe until that point. Bill, however, feels great about today and isn't worried about the future.

In short, they scheduled surgery! Yay! It will take place March 19 at the Duke Hospital, but Bill gets admitted on March 18 for preparation. I will be moving to Durham on the 17th, and expect to stay for 2 weeks, as Bill goes from Intensive Care to regular care. Then he has 8 weeks in bed to recover at home after the 2 weeks in the hospital.

Tomorrow, Bill and I are going to post our comedy version of what happened today at the doctor's office. We were SO anxious and SO scared that the only thing we could do was become ridiculously silly and start inventing scenarios.

So when you see that tomorrow, please be assured that we have not lost our ever-loving minds.

And now, in all seriousness, THANK YOU WITH OUR ENTIRE HEARTS AND SOULS for your love, for your thoughts, for your PRAYERS! We could FEEL THEM surrounding us, and it meant everything.

Love and love and more love,
Beth and Bill