On Second Thought it's an A

It's day 17 at USC and so far we have celebrated 4th of July, a few birthdays, the All-Star game, a 3 1/2 hour LA car chase that past by the hospital 3 times, a new grand baby for Grandma and Grandpa Whitey (#32 we think), and Carmageddon here on the LA freeways.  None, however, has been as exciting for the Dulle's as the news Dr. Selby gave us yesterday, although we are very happy for Uncle Gerry and family and Uncle Big Don looks forward to watching him play football.

Big Don has never been a straight A student he as always gotten by with B's and C's and has done pretty well for himself.  As they say B's get degrees, but for this surgery we were looking for an A, because we aren't sure if B's get rid of cancer.  So we were a little nervous when Dr. Selby came out to talk to us after surgery and he said that he was concerned that he wasn't able to quite get all of the tumor off the main artery.  He said there may be some cancer cells left and he only gave himself a B- grade for the surgery.  He did say that there was a possibility that the cells weren't cancer so after we splashed some water on Bobby's face and thanked God for getting Big Don through 15 hours of surgery we started praying that the cells weren't cancer.  And someone was listening because the pathology finally came back this week and all the samples off the artery were negative for cancer cells.  The main tumor was of course adenocarcinoma but the margins were all clear for cancer.  This means that there was no evidence for cancer left behind.  It doesn't mean that Big Don is completely our of the woods.  There is a possibility that there are some microscopic cancer cells and he most likely will still get chemo and may even need radiation, unfortunately cancer will always be part of Big Don's life. But this is great news, exactly what we were looking for with the surgery, and quite frankly exactly what we all expected from Big Don in this fight.

So the days are definitely dragging here at the hospital but each day is a step closer to breaking out of this joint.  He is making some small farts for anyone that is wondering from the last post, and I know what your thinking, yes Mary said they definitely stink.  Big Don is still doing work on the computer and the doctors think he is progressing each day.  He even went outside on a walk this weekend.  Hopefully he will get out sometime in the next week or so and he will continue to recover down here in Southern California for a while.  It seems like Big Don found a way to up his grade because when Dr. Selby came in to explain things he changed from that B- to an A.  An A that will hopefully allow for more 4th of July's, car chases, birthdays, and All-star games.  And we aren't sure if there will be any more grandkids for Grandma and Grandpa Whitey but definitely great grandkids and one in particular that Big Don, I mean Grandpa Big Don is pretty excited to see this fall. (#1 we think)