good news

1 o'clock and I turn around and see Dr. Skibber. Last time he came out of the case in the middle of the day, he told me he could not get margins and Mark's cancer would most likely return. Today is a different story. He says he got all the tumor he could see. He can't rule out microscopic cells on the left side wall, but there was nothing visible there. Mark will unfortunately have leg pain again, as he scraped around the sciatic nerve. However, he thinks Mark's pain last time primarily came from intraoperative radiation. They decided not to do radiation this time.

So, we're a bit past half-way. The bladder, prostate and rectum are gone, so now they are working on putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again. The urologists are doing a thing called an illeal conduit, which will be the way Mark will pass urine. Plastic surgeons are taking a chunk off his thigh to use the muscle to rebuild his abdominal wall and help fill up the big hole that was created. Finally, Skibber will go back in and create the colostomy. He thinks Mark will be in the OR another 4 hours. It is uncertain if he will need overnight ventilation, but the blood loss was less than Skibber initially thought it would be (and better than his other 2 cases this week). fyi-the surgeon we thought of using in Charleston did one of these procedures in a year. We made the right choice coming here.

As for me, I'm pretty darn happy.