Well, we're happy to say Brian's surgery was a success. They were fortunately able to remove all of the tumors successfully. This was a huge blessing as we were really not looking forward to needing to do this again next month. It turns out he actually had a total of five tumors. The one in the back was a cluster of four separate tumors that were up against each other. Two of them were about golf ball size and the other two were about the size of marbles. They were in the muscle rather than growing off bone, so they didn't need to remove any pelvis back there. The tumor in the front had grown to about baseball size and they had to remove some of the remaining pelvis along with the pubic bone. Along with his other surgeries, this now leaves him without any pelvic bone in front. The front of the pelvis and pubic bone are really just used to hold in your organs, so structurally he is still fine, but they inserted a plastic piece of mesh to hold in his lower abdominal muscles and organs. His lower abs are quite weak along with his left quad, but he continues to make huge strides. I'm always amazed with how quickly he gets going again. Every time the physical therapist comes to work with him, I have to suppress a laugh, because he just gets up and takes off doing way more than either the therapist or I think he can. The surgery was a bit more intense than we were anticipating. He was under for about 5 hrs. and lost about 4 pints of blood. They really had to manipulate nerves(especially his sciatic) and internal organs to get the tumors out in one piece. He is still a bit weak, but his strength is beginning to pick up now that he is finally eating a little solid food. He's headed home with a couple drains for about a week, but they removed all other tubing this morning.
Chemo and radiation were deemed unnecessary. The tumors are sent off for biopsy, and we will receive the pathology report when the results come in. We know they are malignant, but the report will tell us the grade of cancer and if all margins surrounding the tumors are clear of traces of cancer.
He's quite the trooper, and I would be the first to tell you(except maybe my mom) that I'm incredibly lucky to have someone so special as my husband. He's been through the ringer and I thank my Heavenly Father every day for him.
