All Done – Heading to ICU as Planned

Highlights from post-op debrief with the surgeon:

• Sandi’s belly is closed up and she’s in the recovery room. She was stable throughout the whole operation. We expect to be able to see her in one hour.
• She didn’t require any blood transfusions.
• The surgeon got “grossly clear margins” around the tumor.
  • This means that he was able to take extra tissue all the way around, which reduces the chances of leaving cancer behind. Yay.
  • He felt confident that the margins were clear for the IVC. Yay.
  • The pathologist will sample randomly the rest of the tumor to determine if there is evidence of microscopic disease. One week wait. Prayers and good juju for no evidence would be awesome. (side note … technology should exist that determines presence of disease across the entire tumor, rather than one person doing a visual check with random samples.)
• She is expected to be in the ICU for 1 day, and the hospital for 5-6 days.
• She can leave the hospital when she can “eat, drink, pee, poo and walk normally,  and have pain under control with oral pain meds”.  These criteria suggest that I should be in hospital much more often.