Today’s the day: laporoscopy. Thumbs up or thumbs down. I woke up and went to the jobsite because I was so anxious and needed something to occupy my mind.

At 11:11 AM , I got a text message from Kaki wishing that the time till my procedure that afternoon would pass quickly. At that exact moment, I got a call from Dr. Kirkwood saying a surgery scheduled ahead of us had been cancelled. Could I come the hospital early?

The pre-op time at the hospital was pretty uneventful.  Everyone there was consistently lovely and attentive and took great care of me. I felt in good hands.

As some of you may know, I have a long history with the time 11:11. So I saw saw the early Kaki/Kirkwood text/call as a good omen. But I think the even better omen was that as I was falling asleep from the anaesthesia, Dr. Kirkwood held my hand until I went out.

The next thing I knew I was  waking up to a beaming Dr. Kirkwood, who kept repeating, “Your liver is clean, everything is fine.”

I immediately started bawling, which seemed appropriate, and trying to get out of the bed, which was not. They gently told me to stay in bed for a bit.

Kaki, Donna, and Cal hung out with me while I recovered, which only took a couple of hours.They disconnected me from a spaghetti of monitors and I went home, sore but very happy.

Because I find myself, after three make-or-break tests and three long months, still in that lucky 15% of pancreatic cancer patients who have a shot at survival.