Hi everyone,
Below is an update on Caitlin’s situation.
let’s share this page around and help bless this family in a tough time.
I really felt to create this page to encourage this beautiful family.
They have not asked for this, but as we all know expenses do add up and a relief from that will be so wonderful during this trying time.
Let’s BLESS them!
update here from Gill,
Caitlin suddenly fainted the other day at a friends house and through the testing process to find out why, they discovered a large mass that they believe is in her lung, rib and chest wall. We were flown to Honolulu as our island can’t deal with situations like this. We’re in the midst of many tests and thousands of questions. In an hour Caitlin will be having a needle biopsy under sedation to try to determine what the growth is and to determine a treatment plan and where we go from here. All prayers are deeply appreciated as we navigate through this challenging time!
Update:
Here’s the update! Thank you so much for your prayers!!!💕
Update - Friday - Feb 17th
Written at 12.30pm:
They came to take Caitlin to surgery an hour early (at 10am) today which was a blessing! Her surgeon came to her room first and spent almost half an hour explaining all of his thought processes. He told us about all the doctors/surgeons/cancer specialists he’s consulted with before making the decision to proceed this way today. He explained exactly what he planned to do, answered questions, and all in all helped us to feel completely confident in his abilities. They will test the tumor mid surgery and if it shows any cancerous cells they will immediately change tack and do the more aggressive surgery that would take out more ribs. Usually if the tumor is cancerous they like to shrink it first before surgery, but he explained that because she’s been bleeding from the tumor, the cancer cells would already be outside the tumor so they would want to just get it out quickly and then proceed with chemo.
2.05pm
The surgeon came out to say the surgery is all over and it went really well! He’s very happy with how it went. The preliminary test they did for cancer in the middle of the surgery showed no cancer cells. 😀👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽We have to wait about a week before we will know for sure.😬🙁 We’re very thankful the surgery only took 3 hours and not the 4-6 hours they’d estimated!
3.15pm - They called Barney and I both into the recovery room and we stayed with Caitlin for about 10 minutes. They briefly broke the rules for us as there’s supposed to only be one person in the recovery room with her at a time. Now we’re taking turns with her, so Barney’s in with her right now. She’s still very sleepy and slurring her words. She said she feels a little loopy.😂 She’s in quite a bit of pain but they’re giving her pain meds every 10 minutes to manage it. Through it all she’s so incredibly polite and thanking everyone for everything they’re doing for her! 🥰
They only had to take out about a 4 inch (I think it was) piece of her rib, which is better than we expected! The surgeon said that because the blood had been pooling in her chest cavity for so long there was quite a lot of scar tissue and everything was stuck together. The blood clot was essentially squishing her lung, so she should be able to breathe much better now. He had to do a lot of cleaning up and free up her lung before he could even get to the tumor and see exactly where it was. She has about a 10 inch incision and the tumor went a lot deeper into the chest cavity than he was expecting.
Even though he didn’t have to take out a huge chunk of rib, there was a pretty big hole (in the words of the surgeon) so they did some reconstruction with a piece of Gore-tex to add structure and strength.
She has 2 more IV’s in, so 3 altogether and it looks like they poked her once more but were unsuccessful again with a 4th. I think she’s starting to feel a bit like a pin cushion!😬🙁 They we’re prepared with blood in case they needed to do a blood transfusion but we’re very thankful she didn’t need one!
4pm Caitlin was moved back to her room and now at 5.10pm she’s fast asleep. She was in a lot of pain with even the smallest movements so they have her dosed up on morphine right now. Hopefully she’ll sleep the rest of the day/night away and wake up feeling a little better in the morning!
6pm The nurse woke her up to check her vitals and she was sounding a lot less woozy. The nurse showed us the pictures of the tumor after it was removed and it’s crazy to see how big it was! She’s in pain again so they’re giving her more pain meds.
Thank you so much for all of your incredibly encouraging messages! I can usually ‘hold it together’ until I read Caitlin or Barney one of your messages and then I find it a little harder to not tear up. We’re so thankful for the amazing support we have that’s helping us through this journey!
I may not be able to reply personally to you all today as there have been so many encouragements flying in, but please take this as a huge big ‘thank you’ from the bottom of all our hearts!!!💕
Love to you all💕!
