The long awaited update
Dad had his surgery. I don't want to say it was successful but it was. The surgery started late. When the doctor finally came out, we were told that he was unable to do the procedure laproscopic as planned. There was too much scar tissue from his previous surgery. So Dad is cut from breast bone to just below the belly button. Pain. When the finally did the incision and opened him up, the cancer lesion was not on the left side like everyone thought it was, it was actually on the right. Since Dad doesn't have a spleen, his large intestine has worked it's way into that are where the spleen should be. The surgeon said that when they did the scope they thought that the turn they were seeing was the landmark that they stated the lesion was present on, but with the 'abnormal' colon, they didn't really have the land mark. It looks confusing here, but as the surgeon said and I can see it too, it would be a very easy mistake to make. They also found out that Dad is regrowing not 1, but 2 new spleens! And the doctor said they appear to be fully functioning. After the surgery they had a hard time getting Dad off the oxygen, so he had to stay in recovery for over 4 hours. They finally brought him up to his room and he looked like holy hell. I started crying when I saw him wearing a breathing mask and he had an Ambu-Bag (that's what the people in ER use when they are doing CPR to give the breaths). I didn't like that at all. But, he said he wasn't in any pain. He had an epidural with a button that he could control how much of them med to give. We got the pathology report back this morning and it said that of all 30 lymph nodes they took from Dad, none of them had cancer present! So basically, we got everything! I started crying. I was so happy. Hopefully now we can have some free time from this whole health issue. Our family has been through enough I swear. They have stopped the epidural from working this morning. He was in a lot of pain when I got up there today. They are trying him on the oral meds so that they can get him one step closer to coming home. He's finally on a low dose of the oxygen, but he never wears his mask so I don't know why they are even running it to be honest. They are hoping that Dad may be able to come home tomorrow, but probably on Sunday is a better bet. All that is provided they can control his pain with the oral pain killers. For now, this is the end of our saga! Let's hope that it stays that way!