Pre-Op, Surgery Day, & The Days After

I've been meaning to write a post about my dad and his progress over the last few days, so here goes.

We saw him Sunday at a family picnic.  My cousin was in town from Colorado, which is a very rare occasion and is equally awesome.  It was wonderful to see her and it was a good time.  At one point, I was inside and my dad walked past and I said "Heading outside again?" (which is where my cousin and some family friends were)... without missing a beat he replied "Yup, I can see you anytime."  It's funny because 1. He's right, but 2. Being two days before his surgery there was this uncertainty and unknown lingering and he nipped that right in the bud with the comment.  It kinda set the tone for the week.

Monday was pre-op day.  I texted my dad (yes, with that wonderful typo on my part) and the comments that he replied with were, well, typical for my dad.

My mom texted me later with this picture:

This sign was on the bathroom door for my dads, um, pre-op let's-just-say stuff.  He had to be on a liquid diet all day, yet didn't complain once about that.  He also saw his parish priest, just to cover all bases, cuz yanno why not. ;)

Tuesday was surgery day.  They got to the hospital at 5:30am and by 8:30am my mom was told he would be in surgery within an hour and the surgery was expected to take 4.5 hours.  My brother, Jimmy, sat with my mom for some of the day.  Surgery ultimately took about 6.5 hours as the upper tumor penetrated a wall and the surgeon worked longer to scoop out surrounding cells and took out more small intestine than anticipated.  We will wait for pathology to tell whether there is any more cancer cells lingering, which would point us in the direction of chemo and radiation, but overall everything else went wonderfully in surgery.  They were able to reconnect the small intestine to a piece of the remaining large intestine and my dad did well all through the procedure.

He did have a decent deal of pain post-surgery so they hooked him up to a pain pump... which still didn't diminish the pain, but made it a bit more manageable.  I got to visit my dad later that night and he looked good.  They had him on oxygen and in bed, of course.  He was getting hourly nurse checks and his pain was still 5-ish, but he was doing well overall.

My dad and mom

I spoke with him Wednesday morning and they had given him vicodin, as the pump wasn't helping a ton overnight.  He was fairly comfortable with the pump and vicodin.  He had gotten out of bed just before the call, with no extra pain.  On tap for that day was getting cleaned up, taking walks, and monitoring his breathing.  He sounded in good spirits.

Anecdote: I had gone to the dollar store Tuesday night and bought him some supplies to occupy himself.  I knew my dad would get a kick out of fun little nothings to work on while he waited to be released.  When he called, he said he already started his Disney Cars coloring set and that his plush alligator climbed into his gifted plant and was hiding.  Typical.  So, while we are still under the realm of cancer and could hear news that there is some cancer to zap yet and he is still dealing with pain, but my goofy regular dad is in there too.

Onto today: My dad was up for a visit from the kids so in we came.

He was up and sitting in a chair and hooked up to a bunch less than he was on Tuesday.

The oxygen is gone, pulse-ox monitor is gone.  He doesn't seem to be on the hourly nurse check-ins.  I am personally bothered by the pain he is in, but I guess that's part of the process.  I can tell that it's uncomfortable, but I guess when they scoop and pull out a bunch of your insides, that's to be expected.  It doesn't mean I need to be kosher with it, but it's not abnormal given the circumstance.

He has had a slightly elevated temperature yesterday and today, but the doctors aren't alarmed by it.  At lunch he was allowed to eat normal food and they will see how his system tolerates it as the day goes on.  Basically, he needs to tolerate normal food and be able to go onto oral pain meds and he can be released.  It's looking like that will be either Friday or Saturday.  I'm just hoping the oral meds can cover the pain decently.

He did meet with his surgeon today, but nothing substantial was said.  Pathology hasn't come back yet.  My friend said it best to me today... she said "It is a process, but he is moving through."  None of this is a quick fix or necessarily easy.  Yes, the surgery could be all that was needed, but it was still major surgery and will be weeks and weeks of recovery.  It may also still mean he needs chemo/radiation, but that is still unknown.  It's a process and not necessarily a short one, but we are well on our way and in the meantime:

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