Surgery Scheduled for August 14th

Today (August 6th) we met with Pastor Chester's surgeon, Dr. Ryan Rochan. You can start praying for that guy, but we're already thankful for him - he seemed very competent and patient. We asked lots of questions. He even drew a picture of the surgery for us:

That little bullseye in the colon represents Chester's cancer. He explained that he'll be removing the part of Chester's colon affected by cancer, and attaching what's left of it to his small intestine. It will end up being a removal of about half his colon but, he said that Chester will still "have plenty of colon left." Fun fact: Chester's appendix will also be removed as part of the procedure which is fairly funny, as that first Saturday they had initially thought he (just) needed his appendix out. The incision sites will be similar to an appendix removal procedure, but of course, much more will be removed. After the cancer is removed they will do a biopsy on the entire mass, as well as the lymph nodes removed from the area. Dr. Rochan shared that it's likely that the cancer has affected these lymph nodes as well, due to their enlarged size and elongated shape. This means he suspects that Chester has stage 3 cancer, although we will have to wait for the next biopsy, post-surgery, for official staging.

The next scheduled step is: Surgery (Laproscopic Open Right Hemicolectomy) on August 14th. He will be hospitalized for 3-5 days. The likely next steps after that are 2-4 weeks of recovery time, followed by 6 months of chemotherapy (and maybe immunotherapy) appointments. We asked many questions about how Chester can prepare, recover, pace himself and stay involved in family and church life. We will know more post-surgery, but for now it looks like he will be able to continue serving as pastor as he goes through chemo. Pastor Chester will be preaching this Sunday, August 9th at 10am at St. Paul. He's been advised by the surgeon to take 3 or 4 Sundays off after that. We thank St. Paul's leadership/council, and the neighbouring pastors in our Alberta circuit for making sure that our church will be well served during this time. We continue to thank everyone for their prayers and care for our family as well. Friends stepped in to help give our kids excellent summer days while our energy has been low this week, and we had a good meal waiting for us when we got back from this late afternoon appointment. God has been so good to us.