Surgery 10-27-10

October 27th Surgery day at the University Hospital. I was nervous, but glad to be on the way of dealing with this so I can get on with my life. They got me checked in and the nurses and Anesthesiologists came and introduced themselves to us. I told the Anesthesiologists that I wanted them to put nausea medicine in my IV before they woke me up because of my history of having nausea with anesthetic; they assured me that they would.

The first thing I did was the lymphogram. This consisted of them injecting the tumor two times with radioactive dye so that they could map what lymph nodes it drained to (The X-ray technician said it that it feels like a bee sting. I have a high pain tolerance, and it was much more than a bee sting!). After the injections I had to wait about 15 minutes to give the dye time to drain. He then took X-rays, they didn’t show any drainage, so I had to wait again. We did this about three times, then the surgeon came to find me because it was taking so long.

We walked back to where Corey and my Mom were and he told us about the test. (At our appointment on the 18th, Corey had asked what happens if it doesn’t show that it drains anywhere and the surgeon said that he had only had that happen one time in his career) He started by saying, well now I’ve had it happen twice. He said that it was good and bad. Good because of course we don’t want it to be in the Lymph nodes, but bad because it could be strait back where the test can’t see. He said he would have to use an instrument during surgery that picks up the dye to see if it drains anywhere else.

During my surgery he did in fact find two lymph nodes that it drained to, one on top of a lung and the other strait back behind the tumor. The surgery was only supposed to take 2-3 hours, but ended up taking about 5. He had to take off more than he thought. I had a large pad stapled over the skin graph, so we could not see that area, but we were pretty surprised at the size of the scar on my neck and the donor site; I have about a 12 inch incision on my stomach. I also had a drain tube sticking out of the right side of my chest that had to stay in until it quit draining a lot.



I was pretty out of it, but I remember my mom questioning the Doctor because of how my neck looked. The Dr. told us about the lymph nodes he found and that they were sent to pathology to see if they were cancerous. He said it would take about 2 weeks to get the results. I was very nauseous when I came to. I don’t remember too much about the days after surgery.

I remember asking the nurse why the anesthesiologists did not give me nausea medicine. She said he did, it just was not working. I ended up taking two different nausea medications and was still getting sick. They ended up changing my pain medication and that helped. By the afternoon of the next day I was feeling better and they gave me the option of staying another night and I said no, I wanted to go home. That ended up being a bad choice. They had sent me home with a pain medication script, but no nausea medicine. I started getting nauseous that night and Corey went and got over the counter medicine that did not work; Corey had to call the Dr. the next morning and get a script for nausea medicine.