Surgery Is Over!

Jean was in surgery from 8:00 AM until 8:30 PM - 12.5 hours. It's the longest surgery she's ever endured. Dr. Hanto removed a tumor from near her bladder, cleared an enormous amount of adhesions, and moved her right kidney from the upper right abdomen to the lower left pelvis. She's now recovering on the 10th Floor of the Farr Building at Beth Israel Deaconness.

We arrived at Beth Israel's Clinical Center on the West Campus at 6:00 AM this morning. (Yawn...) They checked in Jean fairly quickly and had her prepped by 7:30 AM. The staff and nurses were very capable and friendly, which put her in a good state of mind. The epidural helped too.

My Mom came up from Rhode Island at 10:00 AM and kept me company throughout the day. One of our social workers, Frank McCaffrey, also stopped by to lend support. It was a very busy day in their OR. We were far from the only family waiting patiently on St. Patrick's Day.

One of Dr. Hanto's nurses, Wanda, kept calling me every hour promptly to update me on the status of the surgery. Dr. Hanto and his team worked cautiously. As he explained later, there was a lot of scar tissue and adhesions created by previous surgeries, radiation, and chemo. These adhesions created webs which latched onto everything - organs and blood vessels. The vessels were the trickiest part: dozens of them had to be disentangled from the adhesions before the kidney could be removed and then re-sewn into the new location.

Dr. Hanto spoke with me at 8:30 right after the surgery. It was a much longer day than he anticipated, but they did what they wanted to do: cleared the adhesions, removed the tumor and compromised tissues with clean margins, and move the right kidney to the lower left side. Jean now has two kidneys on her left side! He expects she'll be in the hospital for the next week. Based on recovery from previous surgeries, she seems very strong and likely to recover without complication.

I saw her shortly before I left the hospital at 10:30 PM. She was awake and in a good mood. The credit for that goes to a great surgical team, the anethesiologists, and of course, the epidural.

Thank you everyone for your good thoughts and wishes! I'll try to reach some of you by phone tomorrow. I'll also try to have information on the site tomorrow about visitors and phone calls and etc. She'll want both.

Pat

Posted by gasbarro at March 18, 2006 01:24 AM