"The tumor is out. We tried very hard to just take out the upper / middle lobe of the lung but we just couldn't get it out because the tumor was stuck in the center portion so we had to take the whole (right) lung. He tolerated that well. As far as we can tell the margins are all grossly negative. We were able to peel it off the ribs so we didn't have to take any ribs out. We had to take part of the pleural the lining of the chest pleura because it was stuck. We were able to peel it off the trachea and get all of those lymph nodes out of there. We lost about 2 pints of blood from where we had to peel it of the chest wall, so we gave him 3 pints because he was somewhat anemic to start with. He has a (_?_) catheter to give him pain control after surgery. Cracked 2 ribs, (to spread them apart) the one above which has been sutured to hold and knit together nicely, and the one below which was a little 'green-stick' fracture. "There were no surprises. The tumor was largely gone and the only real tumor mass we could feel was probably about the size of the tip of my thumb but unfortunately that was right in the central place, right between the right main bronchus and the pulmonary artery. The next step is we have to wait for the pathology report to make sure that the margins were all negative and if there is any residual tumor left behind. Now we need to get a good recovery. He'll be in the recovery room for a couple of hours. Then he'll be moved to intensive care where we'll watch him for bleeding and breathing. Irregular heart rhythms are very common after this type of surgery because we had to open the heart sac to go inside there." |