Dear Friends & Family,
They cut on Karen today, making a necessarily large incision to extract intact "the thing", which turns out to have a $5 name, "mucinous cystadnoma". It ALSO turned out to be HUGE, maybe the size of a honeydew melon. Frozen slices were taken and sent down to Pathology, who returned a negative result for carcinoma, meaning benign, praise God!!! Permanent slides will be made and those will take a week to get back.
The surgery was quick, from "wheel away" to closeup was only about 40 minutes, if that. I barely had time to run out, get a burger, come back, and take ONE bite before they were paging me. Even so, they had time to take some amazing pictures, the least sickening 3 of which I've attached. Parents, be careful who's watching when you view these, nothing obscene, but "the thing" is a VERY nasty-looking customer, indeed! (RACHEL HERE - I didn't include them on the blog)
They patched her up, sent her to Recovery, woke her up, worked her pain level down to a 5 (on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "barely noticeable", and 10 being "makes you scream"), sent her upstairs to a room where she's sipping apple juice and hoping for solid food soon. That will be only a hope until tomorrow AM, assuming she barfs no cookies in the night. She's on a morphine analogue (Dilaudid, aka DOPE) which she gets IV every time she pushes the button on a little handheld device.
That device has become her best friend, you bet, because she is enduring some significant pain right now. When the pain gets above, say, a 4, she just picks up her new best friend and gets a squirt of DOPE. 5-10 minutes later, she's starting to relax again. Although it sounds like it could lead to abuse, this method actually reduces the amount of painkiller patients get, reducing the chances / effects of addiction, and gives the patient a very welcome voice in the course of their treatment. She's also got something perched on the end of her bed called an SCD Express, which alternately squeezes her legs (in the calf area) to keep circulation going down there while her system shakes off the anesthesia and periodic applications of DOPE. Her diastolic pressure right now is depressed to something like 60% of it's usual value because of the drugs.
The pediatrician said she can nurse Paul as soon as she is able to sit up and hold him, after pumping and pitching one cycle, which has improved her mood immeasurably. Dilaudid & breastfeeding info: http://www.drugs.com/pregnancy/hydromorphone.html
A while ago the respiratory therapist came by and gave her a little device to work their "incentive inspiration" program. When I asked what the incentive was (thinking something along the lines of a $50 Chili's gift card or some such), the response I got was, "you get to leave the hospital on time - alternatively, you can contract pneumonia and go a few rounds with a life-threatening disease". I said, "sounds great to me!!!"
Bottom line, she's doing GREAT, having gone from almost prone to almost vertical in the 3 hrs since they brought her up. Her vitals are great, her mood is great, and she will probably be ready to try nursing Paul in another hour or two (Rachel, you reading this?).
I'll spend the night in the room recliner tonight for Karen's peace of mind, and tomorrow they say they'll take out her Foley and the SCD Express and work on getting her up and out of bed.
All Praise to the Lord! "I will praise thee with my whole heart: before the gods will I sing praise unto thee. I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. In the day when I cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul." -Psa 138:1-3
Love,
--Steve
RACHEL's NOTE:
They dropped Paul off this morning around 9:15. He did very well all day - the hard part was for me juggling two babies, but even so, they were both so good today - neither crying much at all. Paul never quite figured out a bottle - so it was so nice that I am still very much nursing LaRue and was able to feed him too. Another nursing Mom friend of ours came over in the late afternoon and she helped feed him too. Baby Paul didn't go hungry at all.
Karen called around 7pmish tonight, just as my Dad was heading down to check on them. She wanted Paul. So I called Daddy really quick and he swung back home and picked him up. The nurse came in just as Daddy got there, so he held Paul while the nurse did the temp and blood pressure thing. Then asked Karen questions. Well, just as soon as Karen started to talk, Paul was suddenly all animated and pushing himself up off Dad's shoulder and trying to look around behind him. Of course that just MADE Karen's night. Then as soon as he could, Daddy got her all fixed up with support pillows and put Paul in her lap. Dad said that Paul just completely LIT UP. All smiles and giggles and coos and jabbered for quite a while at her.
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