Right now FamilyLife seems surrounded by medical issues!  Eric has been to the doctors office more in the last few months than previous years totaled.  A friend my age, with kids younger than mine, recently had a stroke.  Another FamilyLife friend recently gave birth to a little girl with life threatening heart defects that have required multiple surgeries in just her first few months of life.  And in the midst of this and much more, Mary Ann Lepine, wife of Bob Lepine – host of FamilyLife Today and head of the content department here at the office, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor!  I know Bob and Mary Ann wouldn’t want to be the center of attention in all this but I also know that many of you would like an update on how that surgery went.  Here is a note that Bob wrote the day of the surgery:

Live from the Neuro ICU

Surgery is complete.  Mary Ann is in recovery, tired but alert.  Her sense of humor is in tact, and she’s wanting to make sure her daughters get dinner soon and get a good night’s sleep tonight.  Pretty amazing.All went well.  Your prayers were answered.
We met about an hour ago with Dr. Berger, the doctor who performed the surgery.  He told us that getting to the tumor was tricky because of the location.  Had we not had brain mapping, the logical thing for the doctor to have done to remove the tumor would have been to go right through (and do damage to) the speech area.  Dr. Berger was able to cut around it to get to and remove the tumor.  He does not expect the surgery will result in any lasting affect on speech, sensory or motor abilities.  Good news.
The tumor is out, but we’re not sure what it is at this point, or whether it originated in the brain or somewhere else.  Over the next week, the team here will do lab work on the tissue to determine if the cells they find are brain cells or some other kind of cells.  Determining whether the tumor began in the brain or not is important to know and will affect treatment options.  The margins of the tumor were sharp and well defined, meaning the mass (the marble, Dr. Berger called it) came out cleanly.  He took some tissue samples from the area that looked like swelling, and we’ll have to wait to see what is going on there.
There is a lot we don’t know.  The nature and grade of the tumor.  Cancer or not.  Whether Mary Ann will need chemo and radiation.  It could take a week or more before we have answers there.
Dr. Berger said Mary Ann did a great job during the surgery and participated well, helping with the brain mapping.  He still thinks her case is very unusual.  He expects she will be up tomorrow, and will be able to be released on Saturday and be flying back to Little Rock on Tuesday.
Funny how tired you can get doing nothing but sitting in a waiting room all day.
Leaving the cafeteria this morning, a woman came up to me and said “Excuse me – are you with I Still Do?”  Turns out she’s a nurse here and had been to our conference in Portland in August and she recognized me from the event.  Small world indeed.
Bob