Saturday morning update

From Kirk's email to the family, late Saturday morning:

Kol went in to surgery prep around 8:30 this morning (Saturday) - he was stable through the night, closely monitored both electronically (heart rate, breathing, blood oxygen levels, etc.) and neuro tests (the nurse woke him up every 30-60 minutes, checked his pupils, asked him questions like "what season is it", "where are you", "who is sitting next to your bed", etc.). Kol definitely did not appreciate being woken up so frequently, and there were times that it took a lot of work to get a response out of him, but he stayed in stable condition and at times was fairly lucid.

The surgeon expected the surgery to last 5 to 6 hours today - probably done sometime around 3PM. The OR nurse is supposed to call us sometime in the next hour or so with a progress report. After the surgery, he'll be in recovery for at least an hour or two before they move him back up to PICU (Pediatric ICU). He'll be in PICU for quite a few days - they'll likely keep him sedated and intubated for at least a couple days post-operative. They expect that Kol will be hospitalized for a week or two, even in a best-case scenario.

We probably won't know a lot of detail about the mass for a while - it may take a week or more to get pathology results, depending on tissue types and what sorts of tests they need to run on it. Typically, masses found in kids this age in the general location that Kol's mass is are usually low-grade tumors (non-malignant), so we're hopeful.

Kristen stayed awake most of the night with him while I managed to get some sleep on the fold-out couch in the Kol's PICU room. We're both pretty tired, but all things considered we're doing pretty well - probably riding an adrenaline high, we'll likely crash pretty hard in the next day or two. We'll likely be spending most of the next few days living out of the PICU - eventually we'll probably take turns sleeping in a real bed at Mom and Dad's and spending the night in PICU and/or the pediatric ward.

The girls (Julianna, Mari, Birgitte) will likely stay tonight at Robin's, and then we'll look at setting up our "base of operations" at Mom and Dad's here in Saskatoon. Ulla has offered to come up to help take care of the kids, and Dad has cashed in his emergency trip cancellation insurance for him and Mom to return from Europe Sunday night (originally not scheduled to return home until next Saturday).

We have been covered in prayer from so many different groups, it's overwhelming to think of - we've heard from Mom and Dad's travel group and at least two separate groups of kids at the YC youth conference in Edmonton this weekend (Regan with youth from her church, and a large group from Outlook/LCBI), as well as church prayer chains, not to mention the astounding response we've had from friends and family on Facebook. There has been such an outpouring of support from everyone - we are *so* richly blessed!

I'm sure there's probably stuff that I've forgotten to cover in this message, so if there's something you want to know please drop me a line - we won't be able to get WiFi until Monday or Tuesday at the earliest, so we only have access through a shared computer in the family lounge in PICU. If you need to talk to us, you can call my cell 306-867-0010 - if we can't answer (or if we're in a spot with poor coverage - some parts of the hospital can't get a decent cell signal), please leave me a voice mail.

Again, thanks so much to everyone for your prayers and your support.

Kirk and Kristen