Well, that was fun

So, I took my place in line and actually was called to the counter to begin the cattle call in a waiting room filled with tens of people holding pagers. It seemed the exceptional punctuality streak exhibited by the UofM machine to date might be ending, however, after arriving at noon, we were unpacking my belongings into my new home (main hospital, Section B eighth floor, room 133-2) by a little after 1:00 pm. Over the course of the next number of hours I met doctors, student doctors, nurses, technicians and received lots of needle pokes as well as a nice gown. I met with Dr. Chang later in the afternoon at which time he reiterated the proceedure and the itinerary for Tuesday's festivities, including a start time of "early to mid afternoon".

Monday night was one of the longer nights of my life. Barb left for the Jensen residence, her temporary home for this week, at about eight o'clock. I spent the next eight hours on the computer and watching movies. Finally, after watching all but the last few minutes of "Rudy", I went to sleep, only to wake up a few hours later for the beginnings of lots of poking and prodding. A shower seemed to be the order of the day at about 11:00 am, at which time the nurse informed me I was on call for 12:30 pm. In the spirit of the UofM punctuality experienced to date, the nurse returned as I was toweling, noting I needed to be ready to leave for the pre-op in about 15 minutes. About that time my sister Anne and brother-in-law Phil arrived for the grand send off, and after all was said and done, I arrived in pre-op a few minutes after high noon. The nurse proceeded to place the world's largest IV in my left wrist. We then met with the anesthesiologist, who explained all of my options. I decided to try the epideral since its recently adopted use for this type of surgery reduces the amount of regular anesthesia by knocking out feeling to the area in question. The placement of the port and the initial test went pretty good, considering the student doctor was sticking a needle through my skin and muscles and into the special spot. After a brief break and a good luck kiss from Barb, they wheeled me off to the operating room. I would have to say it was the most frightened I have been in recent memory. I do remember transferring to the table, some preliminary "happy juice" injections into my IV, and making the "count backwards" contest to about 90 (I cheated and went fast).

Surgery lasted about an hour longer than the three estimated earlier in the day, however I obviously could not tell the difference in my sleep and would not care as long as Dr. Chang removed all of the bad stuff. He later explaind the "bad stuff" included a grapefruit sized tumor and about one foot of small intestines, all of which was located just below my stomach in the very upper segment. In addition, he followed my entire small intestine (I have heard they are around 30 feet in length), feeling for any additional growths, but he found nothing on this scale.

Recovery was quite the party. Somewhere during the course of moving me from the operating table to the recovery room, my epideral port became disfunctional. I woke up around 7:30 pm to the sensation of the breathing tube being pulled from my throat and my chest involintarily reacting to the presence of a newly placed stomach tube that extends from my stomach, along the back of my throat, and out of my right nostril. At this point it became very clear that there was little or no anesthetic was circulating in my system and my coughing and gagging needed to stop immediately since it was enhancing the pain to what I would guess would be equal to a shot gun blast to the belly. It took what seemed like a long time to get the nurse to address the pain, and then became a long time since staff determined my epidural port was not functioning and I needed to sit up, assume the position (new incision, stitches, and all), and hold still while they placed a new port. After what seemed an eternity, the new port and medicine started working and for a while, there was no pain beyond a slight ache. After that little fiasco, the nurse let Barb and my parents in for a quick visit, after which I was wheeled back up to the eighth floor.

Today Dr. Chang stopped by and noted that the tumor is a spindal cell type, which means it is probably the primary tumor from which my lung tumor originated. However, although initially identified as a rare type of sarcoma, the diagnosis will only be finalize after biopsys of both tumors are compared to the slides of my two insitu melenomas. This is necessary since sarcoma and melenoma both include spindal cells, look similar under the microscope, and the pathologist wants to make all possible comparisons since treatment varies substantially between the two.
Beyond that, it has been a boring day of sitting around pushing the pain button every 20 minutes, deep breathing to keep my lungs clear, and trying to avoid the stomach tube induced choking and kacking. Oh yes, my unfortunate room mate had to receive some sort of spinal tap this afternoon, the poor guy suffered tremendously and they never succedded.

Well, the parents just arrived, so I will catch up with you all later.