Craftsman of the week award!

I have always had a real appreciation of people who are good at what they do. I remember when I was in my early teens watching fishermen splice ropes, ties knots, fillet fish and shuck clams, all the while having a good laugh with the people around them. It seemed like they didn't even look at their hands before turning out a masterpiece of ropework, or a perfectly boneless fillet of haddock!

This appreciation of good workmanship has carried on throughout my adult life. I have watched welders doing the impossible fabricating steelwork on a rolling ship, excavator operators clearing topsoil and exposing the plastic membrane on a landfill site with same level of care as you put into peeling an orange, and panel beaters taking a damaged car and straightening every dent and ripple before handing back a car that looks better than it did when it left the factory.

I touched on this a little bit when I spoke at Kirkie Baptist church back in the summer and about how God has equipped us all with skills and talents, and how rewarding it is to exercise those talents for His glory. (Go to www.kirkiebaptist.com, then look down in the bottom right corner for the "Latest Resources and Downloads" section, and have a listen to the morning service on June 28 if you want to hear!!)

James 1 says that "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows". I don't know if the surgeon who operated on me has any sort of Christian faith, but I do believe that his talents and abilities were God given, and I am very impressed! I have to give my "Craftsman of the week" award to Mr Thompson for all his handiwork, and close runners-up awards to all the other doctors, nurses and hospital staff who have helped since I got back to Scotland a few weeks back.

I am going to post a before and after pic below, both very tame and nothing near as graphic as most of the tv shows that air after 9pm, but if you might get squeamish, just stop here!!! 

Also, if you didn't get the chance to hear us talk when we were back in Scotland over the summer you can listen to Kirkie Baptist's service at the link I mentioned above - Abi sings about the 19 minute mark on the "Opening worship" download, then Heather and I both share a bit about MAF and our time in Uganda at the 28 minute mark. I also do the "thought for the day" bit which is under "Sermon" if you want a listen...

Thanks again for all your prayers and encouragement so far, and please continue to pray as we wait for the lymph node biopsy results which will play a big part in determining what happens next...

Andy.

Taken back at the start of the year - yes that little spot is what  all the fuss has been about!

My new, completely customised, one of a kind ear!

Post-op blog post...

I like an illustration with a bit of a story behind it. I was given a card by a good friend last week that has two pictures of the “Tower of Refuge” in Douglas Bay on the Isle of Man. I did two 6 month spells on the Isle of Man in my merchant navy days, and the room where I stayed for most of that time looked straight out onto the tower perched on Conister Rock. It was built in 1832 by Sir William Hillary, who also founded the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. After several ships were wrecked on the reef, the intention was to provide somewhere safe for ship-wrecked sailors to shelter in, until help could arrive.

The card I was given had a picture of the tower in calm seas and nice sunshine on one side, and a picture of the same tower in the middle of a wild storm on the other. Inside the card is a copy of Psalm 46, “God is our ‘Tower of Refuge’ and strength, a very present help in trouble”. I was told to put the card around which ever way worked best for me each day, but to remember that no matter what is happening all around, the “Tower of Refuge” is the same.

The Tower of Refuge on a nice calm day

...and with the waves rolling in.

This weekend has seen the card spin round quite a bit between storms and sunshine.

My surgery went well (as far as I can tell), although it was much more involved than had been anticipated. The cancer removal part of the operation was always going to be intense with quite a bit of skin around the lesion being removed along with the cartilage below it, before everything was to be closed up with a graft taken from behind my other ear. That part of my ear is still all hidden under some stitched-on compression wadding stuff, so it will be another week or so before I see what the Mark II version of my ear looks like.

We had hoped that the sentinel lymph node biopsy would be a relatively small part of the operation, but that depended on where the sentinal node was. It was a 50/50 chance of whether the lymph fluid would drain to nodes in front of my ear, or behind my ear, with aft being preferable because of all the other glands and nerves in my cheek that might interfere with the lymph nodes there. Unfortunately the dye they injected showed that the lymph drained both ways, and they had to remove 2 nodes from in front of my ear and one from behind. I think that is why I went down to the theatre at 1:30, and didn’t wake up again until after 8pm! Needless to say I have a pretty impressive scar that runs down the front of my ear, under the lobe, back up the back side and down again,in a sort of sine wave shape. 

There are so many emotions flipping the Tower of Refuge pictures round just now. The surgeon seemed positive that all was well with the procedure. He felt the lymph nodes he removed looked healthy. He felt the wide area excision should have removed all of the cancer cells from my ear. But melanoma is the scary version of skin cancer. It is the most likely to spread and has a very real potential to be life threatening, so completely relaxing is not easy while we are still waiting for biopsy results on the 3 nodes he removed. 

I have to say that the swelling and wounds that I have just now look far worse than they feel, and I don’t feel the need to be continually eating pain killers, but having had quite in depth surgery on both sides of my head, my face is feeling a bit tender to say the least.  Getting a good night’s sleep is not the easiest thing in the world to do when you can't lie on either side. Everything feels tight, and swollen and the thought of pulling all those stitches gives me the heebie-jeebies! I have lots of little itchy bits that I can’t quite reach, and I am so looking forward to having all the stitches and dressings away and being closer to normality again.

It’s also difficult as a family being separated just now as well. The kids know I have been getting an operation, but they don’t really understand everything that is going on, and all the possible implications, so that just makes it so much harder talking to teary-eyed kids from the other side of the world. Heather has been busy with her new job, which undoubtedly has helped by keeping her mind off things and giving her something to focus on, but it all takes it’s toll, and she is going through a lot, whilst being a single parent for the short term. I am being well looked after by friends and family, and am making the most of being able to spend some time with my family, especially my brother, who I don’t get to see enough of. All that said, I am still living out of a suitcase and would much rather be in my own home, being part of everyday life with my wife and kids.

It is a great comfort to know that God is our refuge and strength, but equally we really value your prayers and encouragements as the weather changes all around us, almost on a minute by minute basis.

1st consultation...

Sunday afternoon saw me on my way home to Scotland to meet with the Doctors about “The Ear” . The best option for coming home this time was via Dubai with Emirates, so I was back in Glasgow just after lunchtime yesterday. 

This afternoon I had an appointment with the plastic surgery team in Glasgow who will be doing the actual operation to remove the cancer. I didn’t really learn anything I don’t already know (having googled melanoma to oblivion for the last couple of weeks!), but it was good to meet with the surgeon and talk through the specifics of my case. While skin cancer is completely curable (or rather ‘cut-out-able’…), melanoma is also a serious condition that can spread quickly, so it was good to talk to the experts about what will need to be done for me. The ear is an awkward place to have a growth removed from. The guidance is usually to have a 2cm margin around a lesion of the size of mine, although doctors are now doing studies into whether a 1cm margin is sufficient to remove everything that needs to be removed. That is good news for me, as taking away a piece of my ear 4cm across wouldn’t leave me too much to hang my glasses on! The surgeon who is now leading “my team” seemed very knowledgable, and confident that he could remove the cancer and still leave the ear looking reasonably sensible… (albeit, the tragic end to my ear modelling career…) It looks like I will have a reasonably large piece of the skin on the front of my ear removed, along with the cartilage beneath it, leaving just the skin on the back which will then get a skin graft from the back of my other ear to cover the hole. Although it will change the shape of my ear a bit, and leave me with a squidgy bit in the middle, it will leave things as close to how they are just now as is possible. At the same time as that operation is going on, they will also do a sentinel lymph node biopsy to determine whether the cancer has spread to anywhere else. There is going to be a lot of waiting around for appointments and then for biopsy results to confirm all is well before I can return to Uganda again. In the meantime, Heather will be home alone with the kids, so we still appreciate your prayers for life at home, as well as prayers for the melanoma situation.

Thanks.