Successful Surgery

Tonight let's have Dessert before Dinner and cut right to the happy ending: the spinal surgery went well yesterday, Andy's already out of the ICU and the tumor is on its way to Dana Farber (DFCI) for specialized testing.

Last week we brought Andy home from the hospital on Monday, after seeing (almost!) all of the cousins and West coast uncles during visiting hours on Sunday. Tuesday we relaxed at home. A visiting nurse came each night to administer antibiotics through the new pick line. Andy spent the week resting, being forced, er, "strongly encouraged" by evil Jen and Tim :) to drink delicious fruit, Ensure, protein shakes to get his system stronger and his body a bit heavier for the surgery. The cast from Criminal Minds swung by on Wednesday and caught Andy up on how the season was wrapping up.

On Thursday we met with his neurosurgeon, Dr Hua, who graciously spent time explaining what would be done, entertained Nicholas with a model of the spine (and a cookie from the nurses) and discussed our desire to have the testing done at DFCI. Dr Hua was very helpful, took the time to really listen to the patient and his family (very refreshing!) and agreed with the additional testing that DFCI could provide, and set us up with the Pathologist at Henry Mayo hospital.

Friday had us up and out early, having breakfast outside at a local bagel shop, and then off the hospital for an additional full body bone scan, and pre-op blood and urine work. It was a pretty tiring day, being up and out for that long.

The week finished off with short visits from friends. While it was great for Andy to have visitors, it was hard on him, as he was exhausted from the pain and the pain meds he was on had the side effect of making Andy a bit anxious with lots of folks around.

We also spent a good part of the week working with DFCI to ensure that the pathology department had the correct directions for shipping the tumor back East. We also held additional conversations with Dr Janne at DFCI about Andy's appointment on 13 May. I'd be remiss if I didn't also thank Karen, the head nurse for the Thoracic Oncology department, who addressed a lot of our questions.

I flew home on Sunday, met mom at the gate, we caught up, then she hopped onto the plane that I had flew in on and headed out West. Andy went in for the surgery on Tuesday, after a very tough Monday. The surgery lasted ~5 hours, followed by 2 hours in recovery and then off to the ICU to keep Andy from contracting an infection in his surgical wound.

Dr Hua removed the tumor as well as ~50% of the T7 vertebrae. Bone concrete was used to seal and build up the T7 where the bone had been. Screws were inserted into his T6 and T8 vertebrae and a pin was setup parallel to the spine, to provide additional support for his back.

Dr Hua believes that the cancer has not made its way to the spinal cord, which is good news. And, as mentioned, Andy is out of ICU, and even stood today for a few minutes. The tumor should be on a FedEx plane tonight as I type.

Some of you have asked why its important to have the tumor tested. The mom of another young, nonsmoker Stage IV NSCLC patient pointed out that a great article explaining this showed up on the RSS feed (to the left) on 18 April: Biomarkers Predict Best Lung Cancer Therapy. The end result from the tumor will be more information which should help select the most efficacious treatment path going forward.

So - thank you to everyone that has been sending positive vibes, who visited Andy, Jen or I, called, texted, emailed, made dinners, took some Swan family member to LAX, helped with Nicholas. Thank you to the other patients that we have met who have provided guidance on testing and treatment options, and educated us through their experiences. We are truly blessed to have great friends and family.

We continue to work on getting Andy back for the 13 May appointment. I am hoping he'll be able to post something soon, hoping that he'll be back home by the end of the week or weekend. I am also going to try to figure out how to create a page with photos from this past week - we have some great ones of Andy in his johnny, wheeling his IV post around the med/surg block, not letting it slow him down.

Good night all.