Monday, April 12, 2021

ALL IN WITH NANCY UPDATE #136

Greetings. 

This is the one hundred and thirty-sixth in a series of NANCY UPDATES I have posted-- now celebrating the fact that even though her post bone marrow transplant and brain seizure recovery continues... the amazing Nancy Neufeld Callaway is still in full remission and has kicked her leukemia on its ass. 

In case you missed the last update (which was the first in quite some time), Nancy has been experiencing some pretty difficult eye issues. Here's a link to the full story:


Now here's the latest update. Today-- Tuesday, April 13, 2021-- Nancy is having some pretty serious surgery. A corneal patch graft of her left eye, to be exact.

Basically, that means they'll be using a small fragment of a donor cornea to replace a section of Nancy's left cornea that has deteriorated to an extent it can threaten the integrity of her entire cornea. Her specialists at UCLA have been trying to glue the area for a number of weeks, hoping it would heal on its own. But since it hasn't-- they must now carefully cut away the area of corneal thinning, and replace it with a "patch" made from donor tissue. That actually gets sutured over the bottom edge of her iris. And in order to spare you the experience of having to look at any online surgical photos-- I drew you a really bad picture.

   

Assuming all goes well, and her body doesn't reject the patch-- the hope is that it will fuse with the rest of her cornea, healing the damaged area, with no further surgical procedures necessary. If it doesn't work, we'll be looking at a full corneal transplant. But let's be optimistic, shall we?


Nancy will be under general anesthesia for the procedure, and it should last about an hour and a half. Then, once it's over and she's recovered from surgery, I'll be bringing her home.  


So if you've got some spare prayers, healing energy, and/or simple words of encouragement you'd like to pass along to the Sunshiny Superwarrior Goddess-- this would be a good time, and we'll gladly accept any or all of it. And yes, I'll do my best to keep you posted on her progress here. Meanwhile, as always...

WE LOVE NANCY, and... 

ALL IS WELL!

If you'd like to register for the International Bone Marrow Donor Bank, here's a link. You could be someone's cure. You could literally save a life.


If you'd like to donate to City of Hope and help them continue their tireless efforts and research to stop cancer, there's a link for that as well.

City of Hope Online Donation

And if you'd like to be automatically notified of updates to this blog-- just enter your email address in the window on the right beneath Nancy's picture, click SUBMIT, and follow the prompts!

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