"Wow, that was a difficult one..."

Prayer warriors: THANK YOU!!! Thank you for your constant stream of support today. You carried the burden for our family!

Caroline’s surgery was a success! When her surgeon met with us after the surgery, he walked in and said "wow, that was a difficult one."  He thinks he got over 90% of the tumor out, from what he could see and feel.  He had to leave some around her pancreas (removal was too risky), but the hope is that the next two rounds of high-dose chemo will kill off whatever cancer he couldn’t remove today. Caroline’s tumor was so intricately intertwined throughout her organs, that he had to take it out in pieces. We will get the pathology of the tumor next week, but the surgeon is pleased with the result.

The resection surgery took exactly 6 hours.  Prior to the tumor removal, there were 2.5 additional hours of surgery prep, anesthesia prep, port-a-cath removal and Hickman line placement.

Caroline is currently recovering with 2 catheters and an epidural, which will remain for a few days. We expect the overall inpatient recovery to be about a week.

It was a VERY long day of waiting, as you can imagine, but we had amazing friends in and out all day to keep us company!  We appreciate everyone that came out to visit, sit and chat with us-  it meant the world to us!

Words cannot express how truly thankful we are for every.single.person. THANK YOU for your thoughts, prayers, texts, wearing #carolinestrong gear/purple/yellow, sharing messages...just everything.

With overflowing thanks,

The Lantz Family

#carolinestrong

#ftgf

Walking herself back to surgery!

First time seeing her after surgery...

"Watching" the Preds game in recovery!

Finally resting in her own room.