Scott's surgery a success

Today I went in for my EGD to fix my esophageal stricture which has been causing swallowing and choking issues. Like a guy I had been ignoring my ever worsening acid reflux for many years and the acid was traveling up from my stomach and was causing my esophagus to literally close. In fact, if Katie hadn't hounded me to see the Dr. about it, and I had gone on ignoring it, it probably would have killed me (and that unfortunately is no joke because Katie is darn proud of herself that her nagging could be said to have saved my life). Life lesson, get married to someone who won't let you just ignore problems. I went into my Doctor just two weeks ago and he wanted me to go in for the procedure immediately since we are planning on going out of the country in June for the next couple of years. Not much to say about the procedure, I'm told it took about 20 minutes, they stretched out the esophagus to its normal size and also took tissue samples from two different areas of inflammation. I will be on prevacid for the foreseeable future to combat the acid reflux and prevent recurrences. The procedure was a total success and we can now head down to the Caymans without any medical concerns at the forefront.

Katie and I leave on Sunday to go down to the Caymans to interview for the positions at ICCI, meet with board members etc. Assuming all goes well and we are offered the positions we have decided to accept them. We have been doing a lot of research on the island and on the college and are very excited.

We have also heard from the Peace Corps and got an invitation to a program in the Republic of Georgia. However, when we contacted them about the EGD, they put an indefinite hold on our applications and told us this would delay our placement. It means that we would not be assigned to a program until the fall at the earliest, which would be ok, or even next year which we had both agreed we didn't want to do. This opportunity in the Caymans really came along at the right time. Being on the other side of the world and without access to adequate care could have been a real problem. As it is, the Peace Corps is very reluctant to accept us into the program because of concerns, understandably, about this condition which is controllable but can be a real problem if not controlled. While we had already decided to take the Caymans positions instead of the Peace Corps, this development has helped us to feel like this was meant to be as the Peace Corps was likely not going to occur at all now.

With that in mind, keep us in your thoughts next week as we interview with the board at ICCI as this is something we are really enthusiastic about and really want to do.

Scott