In which I detail my recent surgery, praise health professionals, & castigate the health industry
Well, that’s done.…
T minus 40-odd hours and counting…
No cancer, still. However, my internal plumbing needs repairing yet again.…
… Last night, Karen took me out to our favorite restaurant (Sarducci’s) for dinner, to “celebrate” my last solid food until sometime in July. It was lovely! …
Tunes and tubes
Thursday was a pretty busy day, and Friday is continuing in that vein…
Yesterday started with some medical stuff: Erik’s naso-gastric tube was removed in the morning, which removed a substantial source of discomfort, though left a residual sore throat. Unfortunately, that also meant the end of the mouth swabs, so he’s having a hard time talking until he can drink water again. The tube feedings (started on Tuesday) had ramped up to the target rate, so they took him off IV feeding, and were therefore able to remove one of his IVs — an uncomfortable one near his wrist.…
Giving thanks
This is Karen. Erik’s now gone into surgery, and I wanted to post a tale of gratitude:
Our family didn’t stop reading bedtime story as the kids got older — we just upped the content to match their age level. We have been reading The Lord of the Rings for our story for about a year now, and by coincidence our heroes entered Mordor about the time Erik was diagnosed, and the parallels, extending Erik’s metaphor, have kept surfacing in interesting ways.…
Surgery
I really don’t expect to have much more news until after the surgery: a CAT scan and a PET scan have shown that the tumor is basically gone (or perhaps completely gone — they can’t say for certain until they’ve seen it in person), and that there’s no longer any sign of it in the nearest lymph node, either. That, coupled with my ability now to eat basically anything (so long as I don’t eat fast), some solid weight gain, and general good health mean I’ll be in good shape for the surgery when it comes.
The procedure itself is a fairly big deal: 7½ hours of robotic laparoscopic/thoracoscopic surgery; I’ll end up with twelve or thirteen incisions and — if all goes well — spend seven to ten days recovering in the hospital, with all kinds of drains, tubes, catheters, IVs, and epidurals poking out of me (or into me). I don’t think any of them will be removed until day №5.…