Friday, June 1, 2007

Hi Friends,
Well, I didn't get home til 11:00 last night so too late to go to Starbucks to post. Everything went well yesterday. The procedure was delayed three hours because they had trouble with the patient before Joe but his procedure went smoothly and only took an hour. It was officially called an embolization, which means they put little seeds in the tumor area to cut off the blood supply to let the tumor shrink so they can zap more of it today. Today will be under general anesthesia and he will make a little incision over his liver to get at the tumor and will be guided by cat scan. He will also look at the lung tumors to see if they have progressed much since his PET scan a month ago. If Joe is tolerating the procedure OK he will maybe zap a lung tumor also. There is a fine line as far as how much they can do at once because the dead tissue has to be eliminated through the kidneys and they have to be careful not to cause kidney failure. His procedure today is at 1 P.M. and hopefully I will be able to let you know today how it is. I think today will be a longer procedure. Joe was pain free from 5:30 til 8:30 when he started to have some discomfort but they put the pain pump on and then he was in charge. The hard part was laying flat for 6 hours afterwards because of the angio procedure but he did well. Karen came up to the hospital and kept us company for awhile and that was great.
Joe forgot his cell phone yesterday but I will bring it to him today. He will be staying overnight again tonight and probably come home tomorrow. The care in the hospital is great and the nurses are very compassionate. I took a picture of Joe with his surgical cap on before he went in and told him I would post it on the blog but it is only on my little cell phone so I was just joking. I know you are all anxious to hear and also praying hard. We feel the strength of your prayers, especially yesterday when we had to wait three hours. Those of you that know Joe know that is one of the hardest things for him to do. Love to you all and God bless. Mary Anne