Surgery over for today. I guess he got into surgery about 8:35. Dr. Z came out to talk to me at about 11. We'd been in the hospital about five hours at that point -- I'd gotten breakfast downstairs, was almost finished with last month's Vanity Fair, and having a lot of trouble trying to keep my eyes open -- but I responded immediately to "Mrs. Hall", despite being pretty unused to being called that. (Tom kept his "maiden name" so I did, too.)

Anywho, it was just about a half hour ago I talked with Dr. Z right after the surgery. Things couldn't be much better. Dr. Zeitels didn't start the restoration process during this procedure (injecting Tom's body fat into the area of the right vocal cord to rebuild it), but the cancer is now GONE! And what he removed this morning, though it had grown since it was originally scheduled to be removed last December, grew OUTWARD, not into tissue and, here's the really lucky thing, it grew BELOW the vocal cord, so Tom's left vocal cord is pretty much intact. Dr. Z also said that the area of the right vocal cord has healed amazingly well.

Everyone's prayers, white light, reduction candles, healing thoughts, etcet etcet are WORKING! Thank you, every one, so much!

Oh, and he also said he was impressed at Kendall's rate of recovery -- he might not have to stick around the hospital with sick people too much longer.

I'm at the hotel's biz center, but will go back to the hospital in about an hour so I'll be there when he's out of recovery and they turn him loose. Dr. Z said, too, that we should stay here in Boston tonight and head home to Nottingham tomorrow. And he won't need to see Tom for about a month -- Tom will be back on the healing diet -- no caffeine, alcohol, carbonation, tomatoes, onions, peppers, citrus, etc. But Tom will cope -- he know's it's for a finite amount of time and it works.

Linn