Kicking Cancer in the Butt

♥♥ Thank you everyone for all of your prayers ♥♥

My dad had his surgery Tuesday afternoon and he did fabulous! The operating room was running behind schedule so we ended up waiting until just before 3pm before the doctor finally came out to talk with us and get Dad all prepped for surgery. Originally we had been told that they were going to go in laparoscopically to remove the cancerous section of his sigmoid colon but just before they took him the doctor informed us that he would be opening him right up.

Of course this is scary news when you have mentally prepared yourself for little teeny tiny incisions with minimal damage and all of a sudden there's much more involved. In the end it turned out to be a good thing though as the doctor was able to have a really good look at the colon, surrounding tissues and the liver. All of it looked great and the cancerous growth was only 1 centimeter in size!!! Can you believe it?! Praise the Lord ♥♥

I swear sometimes I think my dad has lucky horse shoes up his behind LOL. We were anticipating to find him in recovery with a feed tube up through his nose and the possibility that he would have to have a temporary or permanent colostomy bag and there we found him smiling. I'm tearing up as I type this because I was so scared to see what he was going to look like and there he was actually smiling when we went to sit with him and wait to be moved upstairs the the med surg floor. With the minimal destruction to his colon they were able to reconnect the two sections nice and neatly so there was no need for a bag or feed tube. Again praise be to Him as this is just such fantastic news :)

We finally got moved to the ward he will be staying on by 8pm and then we hugged him goodbye. Yesterday we spent the day with him and he was a little dehydrated from all of the colon flushing that he had done previous to the surgery and from not being able to take much liquid by mouth as they were afraid if he took in to much it might cause vomiting but by evening he was feeling much better. He was sitting in a chair and even took a little walk around the floor so he is truly doing great :)

He will be in the hospital for a few more days to recover a bit more before going home and the results from the section of colon they removed should be available within the week. They will tell us if there is any cancer in the lymph nodes and then define what sort of treatment such as chemo he may need at that time. I am being completely optimistic at this point that it has not spread!!

Thank you again for all of the prayers you are sending up for him. I know they are helping immensely and words cannot express how thankful I am to all of you ♥♥

Big (((HUGS))),
Rosina

Stenciled T-Shirts for Father's Day

Father's Day is June 20th and a perfect day to celebrate the Super Hero in your family or in our case to celebrate our 'Super Daddy'! *grin*

I'm crazy about stenciling t-shirts and have done quite a few for the kids and a few school ones with our school name on them for when we go on homeschool outings so I thought what would be better than having each of the kids make a special shirt for daddy :)

If you have never made a t-shirt using freezer paper it is super simple and you can even check out a tutorial I did on it back in 2008 that shows you all the steps from start to finish! All you need is a t-shirt, some butcher's paper or freezer paper as it is also called, a craft knife, acrylic paints and a fabric medium to set the paint permanently on the shirt or you can buy fabric paint that is all ready to go.

I did all of the cutting for the youngest two as they aren't ready to wield a sharp blade yet but the painting was all theirs :)

I had ran across quite a few handprint shirts in the past and thought that it would be fun to have one of them stamp their hands on a shirt...

but I wasn't sure how to tie it into the father's day theme besides it just being a cute shirt with his kids' handprints on it *grin*. Then I came up with what I thought was a pretty smart tag line....

Handpicked by:
L

I love it!!! That has got to be the sweetest saying and I know Hubby is just going to love getting it from his little girl :)

My oldest son is totally into camping so he made his camping themed and I set it all up for him on my printshop program so we just had to print it out and he cut and painted :)

They're all outside hanging in the plum tree right now while Hubby is down working on his tugboat. I'm hoping that they completely dry by the time I have to bring them in so that we can heat set them tomorrow and wrap them for Sunday. I'll make sure and show you the finished shirts after we have them finished :)

What are you making for Father's Day gifts this year?

~ Rosina