Health Update

Everyone,



A lot has happened in the last few days and I am still trying to process it all. I got up Monday morning early so I could go in for my scan. I am going through a bible study called "Stronger" and the lesson for the day was "God is stronger than your bad news". I told Kent on the way to the hospital for my scan - this does not bode well for me. After my scan was over the technician said to me "Do you have an appointment with your doctor right away?" I said "Yes I have one on Wednesday". They have never asked me before whether I had a doctor's appointment - another little sign to me that perhaps things were not going to be well.



The day before on Sunday when we were at church in Elmira I had asked several people to pray that God would give us a definitive answer. Since I had been feeling some better we were in hopes that they would say that the tumor had shrunk or there was scar tissue but we were afraid they might say "Well things look about the same I think we should just continue to wait and see what happens and then we would know what to do about Kent returning to Greece etc.



We got our definitive answer. I was not supposed to get the results of the scan until Wednesday but we had only been home a few hours when the doctor called. He said "The tumors have grown." I said "A little? A lot?" He said "Significantly". He felt it was time we needed to go ahead and do the open kidney surgery and said he would call the surgeon when he got off the phone with me.



Yesterday we saw the surgeon and the news seemed even a little more discouraging. She said that well over half of my left kidney was gone and that the tumor in my right kidney had increased as well. She said that she planned to operate on the left kidney trying to lop of about the bottom third of the kidney. However she said that there was a possibility that she would not be able to find enough good tissue to sew things back together again and if that was the case then she would need to take the whole kidney. This is why she has chosen to cut on the left kidney although it is the more difficult kidney because if I have to lose a kidney better to lose it than to lose the one with more healthy tissue. She said the other concern is that they would seed infection or whatever this is into my abdomen so they were going to try and stay as far to the side as possible and keep me in the hospital with drain tubes for a few day in order to prevent that. She said "I usually go in pretty confident of what I am going to do and I am sorry to not be able to give you better answers but I just don't know what I am going to find when I get in there". She wanted to have a second surgeon in the room as well so because of that they will not be able to do the surgery until May 29th.



One of the hard things about this is that though it is a serious surgery and a six week recovery it does nothing to make me better - it only gives them more tissue to hopefully be able to find out what is eating up my kidneys. My Infectious Disease Doctor says that he only knows of maybe 2 cases ever that are even similar and the surgeon said she has show my scan around to everyone she knows and they are all baffled.



Needless to say this has hit me pretty hard and I am having a few struggles dealing with it emotionally. Although Kent understands and is very sympathetic to this he is going to leave on Saturday and fly to Greece for a little over a week coming back a couple days before my surgery. He really feels that since he will for sure not be able to leave until after our daughters wedding in August, and because we don't know what the future holds as far as treatment if they are able to find what is wrong, this is his one window of time to go back and take care of some leadership responsibilities. Please pray for us both during this time - pray that his time there will be productive and pray for peace for me as I am here doing the pre-op stuff without him.



We don't know where this will lead but we are trusting God that he will show us the way through. Thank you for your prayers and love.



Kent and Myrna Morley
Tripoleos 76
Elliniko 16777
Athens Greece
011 30 210 96 38 625
backhoeboy1@gmail.com
http://kent-uniquelymorley.blogspot.com
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