Sarah just emailed me! With her own fingers! From a CHAIR!!!!!!!!!
Another in a series of literary endeavors
So, I’m home for a few days checking on the critters; Sarah’s Mom, Maureen, is back in Danville with her.
Sarah continues to do well (for a girl with cancer, who just had major surgery, etc.) Her surgeon says she looks ridiculously healthy on the inside, too. She (Dr Halm) got them to up Sarah’s Dilaudid dosage, and told the nurses that if Sarah is still complaining about pain after a couple hours of the new level, to bump it up again.
Aside from the pain – which is both normal and expected, even if it is also both excruciating and annoying – Sarah continues to heal very well. All of the weird things they check, like her various drains and such, indicate everything is healing well, VERY well, with no issues.
She had a stent out, leaving (I think) one stent to go, which is probably coming out tomorrow.
Time for some damn food, probably with another Scotch.
-Nick
Twitter problems
If you mainly follow Sarah on Twitter, you might need to check here or FB to stay in the loop.
Posts here are SUPPOSED to echo to Twitter and Facebook. But, about half the time, they have been giving a time-out error when I post them, which results in the post going up on WordPress (here), but NOT going through to Twitter or FB. I have been crossposting manually on FB, but I don’t have the credentials set up to do that to Sarah’s Twitter. So, if you are following Sarah on Twitter, you might want to check here directly, or on FB, to actually keep up to date. Sorry for the tech problem.
We have had visits from several nurses, and a drive-by from the resident (?). We are waiting on a visit from Sarah’s lead surgeon, Dr. Halm. Sarah is doing very well by all objective measures they check, but she really would like better dosing on the pain meds. So, right now, here is her theme song for this morning.
-Nick
Stoned Sarah
Sarah has a clicky button for Dilaudid. Sarah is dozing.
We’re with her in the PACU. They’re getting ready to move her into her room. This will be her one-night room, because the first night after major surgery they want her in the higher care level room, in the, um, SCU, I think.
Then tomorrow they’ll move her to the room where she’ll be for the next week or so, until they discharge her back into the care of her doctor kittens and Nurse Boxer.
And, done with Phase Three
Sarah is still in the operating theatre while they clean her up and get her ready to move to post-op, but all the surgery is done, and very successfully, no complications, and not even any required transfusions. It will probably be a couple hours, or close to it, before we get to see her, but the day’s heavy lifting is all done.
Both sets of surgeons are very happy with their results, and with her health and her reaction to the procedures.
We don’t know yet EXACTLY how long it will be before she can go home, or when she will hit the various milestones, but everything looks good.
– Nick
Done with Phase Two
We just talked to the liver surgeons. Their phase of the surgery went very, very well, and Sarah is now in the last, least serious phase of her procedures, where the abdominal surgeon goes back, closes the incision, and installs the drain(s) and the diversion.
The liver surgeons said she absolutely looked as good, and did as sell, as any surgery candidate they have had.
Of course, this was major, invasive, abdominal surgery. Sarah will be here, in the hospital, for at least a week, possibly ten days or more; then, she will need a couple weeks of, basically, bed rest, and then at least a couple months of VERY light duty; and then several more months until she is back up to her full strength.
But for what she was going in looking at, she is doing as well as can possibly be expected. Through the whole course of chemo, radiation, and everything, Sarah has come through it better than expected, with few side effects and excellent function and recovery. She is young, and absurdly healthy.
All signs are that she might well perform – heal – well ahead of the curve for this phase as well, do here’s hoping.
Team Science, Sarcasm, and Snark, bitches.
FUCK cancer.
– Nick
