After a roller coaster month, and Tony’s colon cancer surgery last Tuesday, on Friday we received the best news we could have possibly have gotten.  I wasn’t there when the oncologist came to see Tony, but basically he said “we took out all the cancer and I see no reason for you to do chemo.”  Hallelujah!  Prayers from relatives, friends and all of your positive thoughts paid off and we could not be happier!

But, he still had a rough weekend in the hospital.  If anyone has spent more than a couple days in the hospital, you know that its the last place that you can get any type of rest.  His vitals needed to be taken every four hours because his blood pressure was high, he also has high blood sugar which is typical after his type of surgery, so he’s been getting insulin as well.

The problem with the type of surgery Tony had is that it takes a long time for things to start, ahem, moving in the right direction.  One of his doctors described his surgery as a tornado.  Say you are in your house and a tornado rips through your town.  The storm passes and you walk out and you see trees uprooted, debris all over.  It takes time to get things back in order.  Sadly, if it can’t go down, it goes up and out – so he was sick most of the weekend. 🙁

I have to give a shout out to my office who sent flowers and sent a card to the house:

They have been so supportive of my absence from work and have picked up the slack – and thankfully a trial my boss was supposed to have in March got postponed indefinitely, which was huge!   It’s nice working at a smaller law firm because its much more familial than the huge law firms I worked at in Chicago. 😀

But I have a confession to make.  It was actually a comment that Debbi made that I couldn’t let slide:

Who sticks to their diet when their husband has surgery?! You so rock! Hugs!

Um, while I had every intention of staying on program, and even eating the WW food at the hospital – it was once I got home that all bets were off.   Below are just a sampling of items I had last week that somehow didn’t make it on my eTools.

at least Hannah split this with me 😀

I had chicken fingers on the days that the WW meal was fish
and maybe once instead of oatmeal my mouth said "sausage biscuit and a large coffee with 2 creams please"

And Saturday, after spending the morning with Tony, he was super tired and told me to come home for a few hours and take our dog for a walk.  There is a place on the way home from the hospital called Mr. Beefy’s – they have the best chicken pitas, and the fries come with it! 😀

for the record though, on my plate was 1/2 of the pita and I threw out 2/3 of the fries

After I ate lunch and took our dog on a half hour walk, I came back and knew I wanted to make a soup to bring back to the hospital for dinner.   A quick check of the deep freeze, fridge and pantry, I ended up making a cauliflower cheese soup with bacon.

Cauliflower Cheese Soup with Bacon (printer friendly version here)

  • 4 servings – 1 1/2 cups per serving: 242 calories, 12 fat, 12.5 carbs, 3.6 fiber, 16.9 protein =  6 PointsPlus

Ingredients:

  • 1 20 oz. bag frozen cauliflower
  • 4 cups chicken broth
  • 1 cup skim milk
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • 4 ounces cheese of choice
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 4 tablespoons bacon bits (for garnish)
  • 4 tablespoons chopped cooked asparagus (for garnish)
  • 1 teaspoon lemon zest (for garnish)

Instructions:

  1. Microwave the bag of cauliflower and press “frozen vegetable.”
  2. Heat olive oil over medium heat and add garlic and cook for a couple minutes.
  3. Add chicken broth, milk and cooked cauliflower and cook for 10 minutes.
  4. Using a stick blender, puree soup.  Remove from heat and add the cheese (I used 4 ounces of cheese ends), salt and pepper and stir until cheese is melted.
  5. Spoon into 4 bowls.  I had leftover cooked asparagus, so I chopped the asparagus, zest and bacon bits and divided them equally between the bowls.
simple goodness in a bowl! 😀

I found out where the microwaves were in the cafeteria and heated this up for my dinner Saturday night – so much better than hospital food! 😀

And now I have to thank all the wonderful nurses who have been taking care of my Tony.  I can’t imagine how difficult it has to be to put your trust in the kindness of strangers when you are lying in a hospital bed.  Each and every one of them has been kind, gentle and happily get Tony’s sense of humor!   On more than one occasion a nurse has come back on a shift, walked into the room and said “so the wise guy is still here!”  I will forever be grateful for them taking care of him when I am not there.  😀

Still not sure when he will come home yet – but hopefully in the next couple of days.  Thanks again for your continued support, prayers, emails and cards – what a wonderful blogging community! 😀