NIght Before Surgery

Aloha Gang- Beck stepping in to write a quick update the night before surgery.

 Outside the Stanford Hospital

We spent parts of the day with Em's Stanford doctors: Andrew Shelton (colo-rectal surgeon) and George Poultsides (liver surgeon).  Emalia feels very confident with both of them. They will remove the primary colon tumor, her spleen (it has been affected by the chemo and needs to come out), and major portions of her liver.

The liver surgery is the big dog here: it will take about 4-6 hours. The colon surgery afterwards will take about 2 hours.

With metastatic cancer, the surgeons have told us that this is not a "cut it all out" surgery, but rather "Get all the big problem areas out, get everything you can see, and deal with future flare ups if/as they occur." She will be in the hospital for a minimum of 7 days. Then recovering and staying close to Stanford for at least 6 weeks more. We have Rochelle, Kahala's loving nanny from Maui (& Canada) here for 2 weeks to help out, John and Susan Guard arrived tonight and Zadoc is coming next week.

I will be updating the blog throughout the day tomorrow, but Em, JB, and Brooke wanted me to thank all of you who are covering shifts, helping with logistics, providing housing, who've texted and called to wish her well and all of you who hold this family in your thoughts.

Many of you have asked how you can send a card to Em, here's the address:
Stanford Hospital & Clinics,
ATTN: Emalia Brown,
300 Pasteur Drive,
Stanford, CA 94305.

After October 25th her address will be
Emalia Brown C/O the Kirkhams
88 Hawthorne Dr.
Atherton, CA 94027

Also if you want to send Emalia a digital message you can post it in the comments below.

 Only Emalia, "I'm going to be staring at my toes for 6 weeks, I want them to look fancy" 

 It's not the Bellagio, but it's pretty swanky for a hospital. Fountains and everything!

Sweet