The Struggle Has Ended

Greg Hewlett passed away on January 17th after nearly eight years of battling colon cancer. While we grieve his loss, we are comforted to know that he is with his Lord.

If you would like to leave your thoughts on Greg, please see this thread.

If you would like to make a charitable donation in Greg's honor, please see this thread.

Monday, September 29, 2003

Infection; under control

Yesterday, Christine was feeling poorly again, so she stayed home while I left with Pete and Sally to go to church. On the way, I noticed more pain than usual and the leaking of my belly wound. So instead of church, we headed over to the Temple of MDACC to check out their magazine selection in the waiting room. The on-call surgeon investigated the problem and determined it was an infection. He decided to remove four staples and probe around to see if the infection went deep. I wanted to hit him, but he was such a nice fellow. Thankfully, the infection was superficial - limited to skin and fat layers - so he cleaned it up, showed Sally how to dress it and sent us on our way. I was shocked they would just let me go with an open wound, but they acted like it was no big deal. The wound reminds me of Matthew Brady photos from the Civil War. I don't even want to look at it, not to mention having trouble leaning forward to clean it. Christine has a difficult time looking at it, as well. So Sally has risen to the occasion, drawing on her nursing background, and is lovingly redressing it twice daily according the surgeon's instructions.

Just a hiccup... we're rolling once again.


5 comments:

Judy Kovacs said...

Praise God for good friends like Pete and Sally!! Tell them "Hi!" for me. I'd love to hear from them.

Nils said...

Keep laughing. But not too hard.

curtis frodge said...

im keeping you and christine in my prayers man. hope your wound heals up soon so you dont have to look at it any more buddy sounds pretty freaky, as if staples werent wierd enough. i never real understood that. where did it come from? "hey we ran out of stiches, excuse me nurse could you stop stapling those papers and give me that?" haha glad to hear its under control though man. love you both hope all is still well!
-curtis

Sara Williams (Ellis' mom) said...

Don't you just love the mind set of colorectal surgeons! I think they would preferto never close up the surgical wound but leave it open so everything has to heal from the inside out. That's how mine was...

Julie Burck said...

Hey, big bro! I thought the wound was interesting, to say the least, since it made your belly look like one big stitched football (sans the leather)!! I bet the surgeon is a Cowboys fan, of course??!!! :)
We're really thankful we got to see you last weekend! Tell the Rasmussens we had a great time with them and the burgers were wonderful!
Love, JuJu, Mike, and Charles