Surgery 16

Wednesday, Brian hit #16 for his surgery count to date. He went about it in typical Brian fashion.

They made the initial incision through his previous scar at about 8:40. He had three surgeons working on him- Dr. Scott(orthopedic surgeon), Dr. Chick(plastic surgeon), and Dr. Hopkins(urologist). The removed the tumor by the bladder first. It was pressing up against the bladder and they were worried about it invading, so they had to take a piece of the bladder along with the tumor. Because of that, Brian will have a catheter for 2 weeks. The catheter is probably what Brian hates most about surgery, so he isn’t too thrilled about this, but they are concerned about infection and bladder spillage so the catheter is necessary. Had they not taken that piece and the cancer were to invade his bladder, they would have needed to remove it completely, but they feel confident that the margins were clear. They also removed a small mole on his thigh that looked concerning. Unrelated to the surgery, but they happened to find it, so they removed it and will send it to pathology.

Next they started on the second and largest tumor that was located around all of his nerves that we were concerned about. These are the nerves that were agitated last time and caused him to lose his quad muscle function for about 7 months. After removing the biggest part of the tumor they found another smaller one attached behind it. After taking it out they were very surprised to find 50-60 small tumors that they removed. They removed the ones they could see along with many that they could feel. They hadn’t shown up on the scans because they were so small. They ranged in size from about a grain of rice to the end of a pinkie finger. The doctor said we have to assume that they grew from the biggest tumor and fell off. The biggest concern is that there were microscopic cancer cells that fell from the tumor that were too small to be seen or even felt. Brian is pretty discouraged about this news, but we are fortunate to have the doctors we do and if any two surgeons were to find them all it would be the two working on Brian(Dr. Scott and Dr. Chick). They will just have to keep an eye on that area through scans to see if any more show up.

He had to chisel away the tumor on his hip and cut down through the bone which needed to have a screw placed through the bone to hold it together. He will need to be on crutches longer so that he doesn't have weight bearing on that hip. Dr. Chick then repaired the hernia.

Some of the mesh had come undone from the last repair so he fixed that and is hopeful that it won't pull apart again. They then turned him over and removed the tumor on the back side. That tumor was a little smaller than a golf ball and they were able to take it all.

The first couple days out of surgery have been a little rough. He has been running a fever off and on and feeling pretty lousy. Dr. Scott is not concerned about infection because he says it would be too early for that. He thinks it is because Brian wasn’t able to get up at all the first day. He's been on Tylenol to try to get the fever down. His blood count was a bit low so they gave him a couple pints the first evening. The physical therapist has been by a couple times and we are all impressed with how well Brian is moving around.

The miraculous part of it all is that he doesn’t seem to have hardly any nerve damage. We were really concerned about this since they were working in that area for several hours getting all of the tumors out, and the last surgery left him with no feeling and loss of muscle function for several months. He is really quite blessed in that way.

We truly appreciate all of the support and prayers and feel very blessed to have such a wonderful support system.