Surgery update 2:00 PM
The surgery is done. It was very stuck to the kidney and the veins surrounding it and so they removed the right kidney. The only other structure it was stuck to was the vena cava (major artery) which the surgeon said needed many stitches. They did the intraoperative radiation and that went fine. The surgeon confirmed the patholgy while the surgery was going on it is is neuroblastoma (though matured - probably due to chemo - ganglioneuroblastoma). Nathan is in recory and we will be heading up to see him in a few minutes.
As the surgeon said - and we knew - Nathan will need further treatment - when he starts recovery we will be discussing what that will be.
The next update will probably not be until tomorrow unless something changes. He will be heading across the street to another hospital for a few days to be in ICU.
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*** Wedsday Quick Update ***
Nathan is in the OR. They were pretty quick about things this morning. He basically went in at around 8am ET. He was getting bone marrows done first. As of 9:35 they were still positioning him for the surgery. It will be a very long day of waiting. We will try and update later today with status. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.
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Greetings from New York. Everything went very smoothly today. When we got to the airport we found out they decided to take us to New York first - so we went straight there and landed around 2:00. We were at the hospital by 3:00. They did blood work and exams and we talked to the doctors. We also had to give Nathan a bevy of medicines to prep him for surgery.
The surgeon thinks there is something there and he showed it to us and compared it to a prior scan they had. So - I don't know what the mystery was about something being there or not - but it looks like there is someting there. He may or may not remove the kidney depending on how stuck the tumor is to it. We told him we were all for removing it if would help get the tumor out of there. He is gong ahead and doing the same "big" surgery as last time. They will use the same incision which goes from his abdomen and wraps around towards his back between his ribs. He will have a chest tube, epidural, some IVs, a urinary catheter, nose tube and will be intubated. He will be transported across the street by ambulance to the ICU at NY Presbyterian hospital and after a few days he will be back at Memorial Sloan Kettering at the observation unit and then to the regular inpatient area. We expect him to be in the hospital for a week.
They will also be performing bone marrrow biopsies during the surgery. Those showed clear before and it is crucia that they still are. We will get initial results in a day or two from those.
The radiation oncologist talked to us about how that is done and there really aren't any risks from doing it intraoperatively so we are glad they are doing that. She said it would add about 45 minutes to the total surgery time.
So - we need to be at the hospital at 6:15 tomorrow morning and he should be the first case of the day. I am sure it will be an hour or two before he goes in to the OR and then I imagine he will be in the OR for many hours. Last time it was around 8 I think. We will update as we can - we will probably have someone update when he gets out and we go to the ICU because we won't have computer access there.
We are staying at my aunt's apartment since she and my uncle are in Arizona at the moment. Tomorrow night I expect we will stay at the ICU and then switch off nights spent at the hospital. I need to be careful because last time I got really sick from the stress of the surgery and from the lack of sleep.
Hmm - I feel like there is more to say but this seems long as it is.
We'll update tomorrow.
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