Welcome to Nathan's Cancer Journey

This blog is a reposting of Nathan's Caringbridge page which we updated throughout his battle with Neuroblastoma.

Nathan was born on June 16, 2000, diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma on April 1, 2003 and died on July 29, 2007.

I have posted the journal here to make it easier to look up by date and also to be able to easily add pictures to the journal entries.

Some of the pictures go along with the text, but many of the pictures you will see were pictures taken on the same date the journal was added, even if the pictures have nothing to do with the text. In the future I may add additional journal entries to go along with pictures to add more explanation/memories.

I am just getting started posting the years of entries and so this will be incomplete for some time. I hope to eventually also post the guestbook entries by date as a comment on the post.

Friday, November 21, 2003

Friday, November 21, 2003 5:23 PM CST

10:35 Easter Time: This is update three - see below for previous updates from the day. This is Beth typing as Luke dictates to me.

Nathan is out of surgery, doing fine, and in the ICU recovering.

Nathan's surgeon came out around 8:20 this evening and said that Nathan did well, and that he feels he got everything he could see. Everything indicates that he was extremely thourough. The pathology report won't be back for about a week, but the surgeon feels that some of the tumor removed was live cancer.

They took Nathan straight from the OR to the PICU at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He is still asleep, and they will keep him sedated mainly because of all the things he's attached to. He's intubated, has an epidural, a chest tube, an arterial line (for monitoring), an NG tube, and a catheter.

They have him restrained so that if he should wake up, he won't pull anything out. They may extubate tomorrow depending on how many fluids he gets tonight and how his lungs are doing (the various fluids could collect in his lungs).

He will be in the PICU until Probably Monday or Tuesday.

Luke and Susan are doing fine and feel they have made the right decision. One of them will sleep in the reclining chair in Nathan's room, and the other find a place to sleep in the waiting room, as there aren't two comfortable chairs in Nathan's room and they both want to stay close by.

From Luke "As always, thanks for thinking of us."

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Susan here...just an update - Nathan is still in surgery.

Nathan went into surgery around 11:15 and they did bone marrow biopsies and aspirations and placed an epidural. The surgeon made the first incision around 1:15 and as of around 3:30 he will still making his way to the tumor. Our latest update at 6:00 has the surgeon still working away at removing the tumor and he expects it to be several more hours. There are actually computers available in the waiting area which is why I am able to update. My aunt Joan has been with us the whole time and has been a great diversion and company to us.

We will try to update later or have someone do it for us.

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