Hello Everyone!

I don't know who knows and who doesn't because I have talked to so many people this week but there have been added developments with things regarding my health (and more yet to come...)

The surgery date has been changed. I will be having surgery on the 14th of September (Thursday) not the 11th as planned. The reason is because the more they look at the CT scans and the results from the tests they are doing are pointing to more complicated things and they are pulling in more specialists to work on me during surgery. So basically the 11th they had another surgery as well as mine and they feel that they need as much time as possible to work on me without feeling like they are "rushing" the surgery. And so the 14th was a surgery free day for all specialists so they decided to do it then. It looks to the surgeons like my tumor is "invading" the vena cava (see attachment). This is a problem because the vena cava runs through the liver and delivers all the blood from my liver down back to my heart. This would partially explain whacked out blood pressure readings. So they are pretty sure they are going to have to cut out part of my vena cava and replace it. They are still waiting for test results to determine just how extensive the surgery will be. Basically this boils down to I am having a rare major surgery done.

I have however decided that I will need to find other sources of paying for this surgery. So if anyone knows of any programs out there let us know. We are going to have to cover at least 20% of the overall cost if not more. So I am now looking into the National Institute of Health or National Institute for Rare Diseases to see if they want to study my case because they pay for all your procedures if you consent to them studying you, but I am not sure if it will require me participating in a clinical trial or not (which I may not want to do).

Another option I am looking at is seeing if Discovery Health or TLC or one of those channels that does the rare medical type stories wants to come and tape my surgery and use it for one of their shows. I figure that they probably would help to pay for some of the costs and I would have a video of the surgery on top of it!

Anyhow, I will keep you posted with news as soon as I know. Please let family and friends know the surgery date has been changed. I am trying to reach everyone I can about it, but I just have a lot of people to talk to.

I love you all, take care.

Love,
Becky