Surgery Update

Hi everyone-

Now that we've introduced you to our blog, we wanted to begin with our informative updates.

Kate is scheduled for surgery to remove the mass in her ascending colon this Thursday 1/21 (time still tbd) at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She is expected to be in the hospital for 5-7 days. The surgery is rather "routine" and we have the head of surgery for GI at Penn performing it, Dr. Jeffery Drebin, who comes highly recommended. It's a very simple part of the colon to remove--she should recover fine and will not need any special care for her colon.

We're anxious to get the surgery done quickly with the hopes she'll be more comfortable and most importantly, we'll have "removed the source" of the Cancer. From there we will need to do Chemotherapy, how much and how often etc is all still TBD. We'll need to wait 4-6 weeks post surgery before that begins. That's all the info we have on that so far.

So for now we are enjoying lots of family time. Shawn has become the resident Chef and Jen, Steph, Lisa and Jake help prep and clean. We've been doing family dinners together since we got the news which we find helps everyone, especially Kate. Albert (while already a bit spoiled) is enjoying the home cooked meals-but of course nothing is like his Kate's meals :)

We'll continue to share what we're up to and of course check back after Thursday for the post surgery update. Once we're in the hospital and have more information on visitation etc we'll update the info here.

Thanks,

Ostrich Crew