Merry Christmas and Happy Appendectomy

This is Brian updating the Biedeblog. God has answered so many prayers for us this week. Anita had her appendix removed this morning and everything went well. The doctor said that it was a good thing we had it removed because it was in bad shape. He said that her "chronic appendicitis" is what has been causing her so much discomfort for the past nine months. That includes her 3 episodes of excruciating pain that caused us to look into this in the first place. For those who have been following the blog, the two times Anita was hospitalized when she was pregnant with Allison was probably because of her traumatized, hemorrhaging, abscess filled appendix. The doctor in South Africa had diagnosed those attacks as "tendinitis" but when she had a third episode three months after Allison was born we realized that it probably wasn't tendinitis. How grateful we are that this showed up on Anita's CT scan and that we were able to deal with this here in the U.S. -- if her appendix had burst in Malawi, our only option would have been to airlift her back to South Africa.

Anita was in the hospital at 6:30 AM this morning for surgery and able to return home at 6:00 PM this evening. The whole operation was done with a scope - AMAZING. The kids are all staying with friends until tomorrow afternoon and I have been able to be with Anita the whole time. My sister is planning to be here tomorrow to help me with the troops. Thank you, praying friends, and please continue to pray for Anita's recovery. (P.S. - the doctor also found a hernia while scoping out Anita's abdomen and he stitched that up while he was there - another thing to be thankful for). We have been accomplishing much on this furlough and look forward to our return to Malawi in just four weeks.