Theres no place like home!

Theres no place like home…..


Yesterday I came home from the hospital!!!!!!!! Today is one week since I had the whipple procedure. I am still very weak and each day will be a fight for survival but I am so glad to be out of that place. My surgery, as my son Evan reported went well. It was a five hour turned nine hour ordeal, due to my amazing surgeon Andrew Lowy and his determination to remove an extra suspicious lymph node that didn’t want to be removed. Many surgeons would have closed me up and just left the cancerous node there but not Dr. Lowy. He worked tirelessly until every cancerous node was removed and still found the time to meet with my parents and children and Adam after the surgery and brief them in a kind and considerate way. He is a compassionate and diligent man and I owe my life to him.

I am not out of the woods yet. I have more than a hundred stitches in a giant horseshoe shape on my abdomen. I am still in serious back pain from the epidural I had all week. But I was walking around the hospital daily and doing well and would have rapidly deteriorated had I not been allowed to come home and rest here in my comfort zone.

There were many amazing nurses at UCSD Thornton who cared for me with such kindness and love. I will never forget them. RJ, Jody, Karen, Rodney, I owe my quick homecoming partly to you. There were also a few nurses who were lousy and did a crappy job. One night they had me on such a fast IV drip that I had to go to the bathroom every five minutes. I didn’t sleep at all that night and after more than 500 trips from my bed to the john, I realized that if I was that strong that I could get up and out of bed that many times, I would be better off at home. One very negligent nurse simply forgot to give me my pancreatic digestive enzymes on the very first day of my introduction to solid foods. It wasn’t discovered until my second day on solids that no one had given me any digestive enzymes. That nurse could have made me very sick and again I started to realize that I desperately needed to be home where I can monitor and control my own medications. The food was another issue at the hospital or the crappy hotel, as I called it. The food was all from cans, jars or frozen. There was nothing raw, organic or even remotely healthy on that menu and when youre a person fighting for your life, healthy foods are everything. I met two amazing people in the hospital Rachele Fiore, my anesthesiologist assistant during my surgery took the time to visit me every day after the surgery and her friend Alan was another angel who made my stay bearable and better. Thank you to all my angels.

I am taking it slowly. No driving or riding my bike or lifting anything heavy. Today my goals are just to take a shower and maybe water my yard or walk half way down the block but every day I will get just a wee bit stronger until I am back to the feisty, passionate, fighting, kicking and screaming broad you all know and love.

Thank you so much for your flowers in the hospital, the cards and letters and the emails. I have not felt well enough to respond to everyone and just writing this update has taken some big effort on my part but I know so many of you are waiting for email replies and return phone calls, I had to do something to reassure everyone that I am okay. I will get thru this thanks to my own spirit and resolve and to the vast amount of love out there for me. The benefit at perqs was beautiful and so many people were generous and sweet to evan and shared their well wishes and concern. I am hopeful that I may be able to attend at least part of the benefit at Humphreys on May 5 if I continue to make such good progress. Then I will be able to thank you all in person for your love. Your healing white light is sustaining me, nurturing me and making me whole. Please don’t call me at home unless its absolutely necessary. I am in a lot of pain and just trying to take things one day at a time and heal. xoxox

Much love to you all from the sancitity of my sunny Oceanside home,

Candye Kane