Tuesday, July 13, 2010

IN surgery right now

Rob is in surgery. They actually started the surgery around 12:15. It is a big surgery. I knew this, but when the anesthesiologist was talking about putting in an arterial line, it really hit me. The purpose of an art or A-line is to closely monitor vital signs. Working on the neck (to remove the nodes) puts them RIGHT beside the carotid artery and jugular veins, vessels you don't want to nick.

Rob's concern yesterday was "I wonder how I'll feel when I wake up." Please pray that he'll be comfortable and won't have ANY nausea. He'll have a morphine PCA pump. Hopefully, that will control his pain and help him sleep through a lot of the first couple of days.

Dr. Jackson is planning for us to be here for 5 days. She had previously mentioned 3-5, but today only said 5:(

Also, we won't have the pathology results for the lymph nodes and to determine the depth of the lesion today. They will do frozen sections to determine if the margins "edges" are clear.

The deciding factors for whether or not Rob has to do radiation treatments are:

If, more than 2 lymph nodes are positive (pathology will determine if there is any microscopic disease)

Lesion depth of greater than 4mm

Perineural or lymphovascular involvement

Dr. Jackson will come out and talk to us after surgery. So, I'll update later.

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