Cleveland Clinic Appointment

Bettyjo saw Dr. Alam at the Cleveland Clinic today, and he has scheduled surgery for February 28, 2008 @ 7:30am. The surgery will take up to ten (10) hours to complete. He will take a patch of skin from her left forearm, along with a vein for blood supply. He will remove the damaged section of esophagus, and form an esophagus from the patch. She will then have a skin graph on her forearm.

She had some pre-admission testing today, but will need to be at the Clinic on the 27th @ 9:40am for the remainder of her pre-admission testing.

She will be in the hospital for at least a week, and the estimated total recovery time is six (6) months.

Please pray for Dr. Alam, the surgery team, and most importantly for Bettyjo that this will be the last surgery/procedure for this condition, and that her healing will be complete. Pray for the girls and me as we juggle schedules, traveling, ect. and that we will all be patient and "wait upon the Lord"

Bettyjo Update

Sorry it has been so long since my last update. The last two weeks have gone by very slowly, waiting for some direction from the ENT. However, Bettyjo got a call this afternoon telling her that she does not have a bone infection, and that we have an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic on January 30th at 9:00am. We were told to reserve the whole day for testing. I am hopeful this means pre-admission testing, and not we'll see if we can help you testing. We will be going up the day before and spending the night so we are both fresh for the entire day.

Please pray that they will be able to help us, and that whatever they propose will work!

Thanks to all of you who have been keeping up with this blog, and if you can please leave us a comment to let us know you were here.

Bettyjo Update

Bettyjo got a call from the ENT today. It looks as if she will be going to the Cleveland Clinic for the reconstruction. Before it is set she will need to have an MRI (she had one done on 12-31) and a test to see if she still has the bone infection. If she still has the bone infection, she will need a series of IV antibiotics that will last 6 to 8 weeks. If not, hopefully she can get in right away to have the reconstruction surgery.

The reason she had the MRI was to find out why she is having so much pain between her shoulder blades. Hopefully it's just from the surgery in July, and not another disk going out.