Shout out to Karen

So my mother in law Karen has been in and out of the hospital for the past couple of weeks. One of her lungs deflated while she was in Texas 1 month ago and when she went to the doctor they thought she had asthma. So they gave her an inhaler and sent her on merry little way. After 3 weeks of not much improvement she went back and asked (so politely I'm sure) for a chest x-ray. The doctor immediately followed her the the hospital because they told her that her lung was deflated. They inserted a chest tube to inflate the lung and when they did and x-ray they found a cyst on her lung- a good sized cyst. They kept her in the hospital for a few days and did the x-ray again to make sure the lung had stayed inflated. They took the tube out and sent her home because the lung looked good. They wanted to perform surgery to remove the cyst, but were not going to do it for about a month, but wanted to see her back a few days later to make sure the lung hadn't deflated. When she went back and got another x-ray they informed her that the lung had deflated again so they wanted to do the surgery almost immediately. So, 7 days ago they went in and removed the cyst and part of her lung. She has really been through a lot of pain on and off with in the past week. The chest tubes were very uncomfortable and the pain from the operation has been very unbearable at times. But Karen is amazingly strong and while visiting with her you would never know she was in pain. She is still cracking jokes and making us all laugh. The doctor said that he can't believe that she went so long (3weeks) with only 44% lung capacity. She is a miracle. We have all been very worried because any surgery is a risk and she is a huge part of our lives and our children's lives. But we also had a peace knowing just how strong she is in her faith. We are praying that her recovery would go fast and she would be back on her feet soon. We love you karen!!!



Karen is so lucky to have "nurse nonna" to take care of her