Friday, September 5, 2003

Friday, September 5, 2003 2:13 PM CDT

Luke here...Nathan continues to recover very well. He had a good night last night. As the day progressed he was drank a good amount of juice and handled it well. They gave him some broth too and he had quite a bit of that. He got off of his fluid IV and they switched him from "clear fluids" to "full fluids" so he could have milk! He sucked down 20oz of milk last night after having almost the same amount of juice and a lot of broth. He slept well with few interruptions and slept in a little. This morning first thing after getting him up he had a CT scan of his sinuses and neck. Something showed up in a previous scan and they are following up on that. The doctors don't think there is anything there, but we obviously have to check. He handled the scan wonderfully and did not have to be sedated. When we got back upstairs the doctors started showing up on their rounds. Nathan was cleared to eat whatever he wanted and promptly asked for a grilled cheese sandwich and some chocolate cake.

He is also now being unhooked from most devices. He had his epidural taken out as well as the urinary catheter. He is still hooked up to some oxygen, but as we try to get him walking this afternoon where hoping his breathing deepens and we can get rid of that too. As long as we can get him walking and his pain is handled okay, then he will likely come home tomorrow! His spirits are great and he is recoving so well.

We got the report on the tumor from the pathologist. What is it with radiologists and pathologists that they can't write a report that tells anyone anything (I apologize to the many radiologist friends that I have)? I'm not talking about Susan and I understanding either. We have never gotten a single report that told the whole story to our oncologist either. He always has to talk directly to the pathologist or radioligist to get "the story between the lines". As you may have guessed, we got another report that is contradictory at worst and not at all clear at best. The clear good news is that there were good "margins" around the tumor. My understanding is that at the edges of what the surgeons removed the walls of the tumor were relatively thick with dead or calcified material. This was all true except for one section of the tumor which the surgeons think was the piece that was stuck to the tumor. They cauterized the area of the kidney where they removed it, so they feel pretty good about that part of the path report. We aren't so sure though about the makeup of the tumor itself (how much of it is active neuroblastoma). We'll get more on that hopefully soon.

I absolutely know I'm missing lots of information in this, but the most important thing for people to take away is that Nathan is feeling well, being increasingly active, and should be home tomorrow. And above all else we finally got that damned tumor out of his body.

Thanks to everyone for following along, praying, sending gifts, e-mails, etc.