Woo Hoo!
Sarah’s surgery was completed about an hour ago. Although we haven’t seen her yet, reports from the doctors are fabulous.
They removed all carcinoid they were able to find. And they tried very hard to find it all. And they didn’t find any carcinoid anywhere we didn’t already know it existed. Exclamation points!! Exclamation points!!!! Exclamation points!!!!!
All updates throughout the day and afterwards indicated Sarah handled the 5-hour procedure very well. “Her vital signs are beautifully stable” was one of the reports. I asked the surgeons how her liver looked and Dr. Wang responded that it was “one of the healthiest livers we’ve seen in a long time” with a big smile. They believe it’s possible/likely that some microscopic disease remains in her liver, but “we’ll deal with that in 20 years or so,” said Dr. Boudreaux, and there “was much less (liver disease) than we expected”.
More technically, they surgically resected three one-centimeter or so sized tumors in her liver. They then used radio frequency ablation to ‘melt’ another nine or so “BB-sized” tumors in her liver. They also removed three lymph nodes that had carcinoid, and another “few” that were enlarged but didn’t show signs of carcinoid (but will test those too). Finally, they removed her gall bladder as part of the plan (because the shots she takes can cause gall stones). They used the geiger counter and couldn’t find any more disease anywhere, including in her stomach (or anywhere else).
Everything that happened was expected, and they didn’t do nor find anything unexpected. They removed what we were pretty sure already existed, and were unable to find anything else to worry about. I’m restating, trying to figure out if there’s a better way to say that this is essentially the best possible news that could have come from today. A long, great day, broken up by a big storm and brief power outage in the hospital (waiting room, not the operating room).
Sarah will be in ICU starting here in a bit, for a day or two, then in a regular room for another few days. Enormous thanks to all for all, on behalf of all of us in New Orleans.
even ku gets a pass today, stupid shoe-wearing mythical birds.