Liver Surgery

Greetings. Well the surgery has happened and I am now on the road to recovery. It has been almost 2 weeks since the surgery (12/16) and my liver is still in the midst of regenerating and I am trying to regain my strength. The pain from the healing is still there though it has become pretty mild the past couple of days and is controlled with Tylenol at this point.

On the day of the surgery my wife and I arrived at Northwestern Memorial Hospital around 6 am. The surgery took place a couple of hours later and entailed the resection (removal) of the right half of my liver (and removal of the attached gall bladder). The surgeon found that the previous PVE procedure that had been done had worked very well and the tumor had shrunk due to the decreased blood flow to it. With this Dr. Baker was able to remove the tumor by only resecting the right lobe and did not require the "extended right resection" as had been previously expected (which would have meant removing around 75% of the liver instead of the ~50% that was removed).

I was in the hospital for 2 nights and was very glad to be allowed to go home on Thursday (12/18) around 2 in the afternoon. I did not sleep well in the hospital though I don't know why I thought that I would the two nights after the surgery. Even when I got home things were more comfortable but good sleep was fleeting for the first week. Very few positions were comfortable in bed for very long due to the pain that I was still in. This has since gotten better and I am sleeping better at night.

Right now my biggest issue is stamina and strength. This is expected as during an early visit to the doctor she explained that the body uses an incredible amount of calories in regenerating the liver. This leaves you feeling like you have been hit by a truck for the first few weeks after the surgery.

I have already been back to the hospital once since the surgery (Monday 12/22) to see Dr. Baker. She was happy with how things looked and I have another follow-up after another 3 weeks. I am not allowed to lift anything more than 15 lbs until then and was told to not do anything that would exert myself. At this visit I also had my drain removed from my abdomen. This was very painful as the nurse had to pull pretty hard to get the tube out after my body was starting to attach to it during the healing process. (I know - "too much information").

The timing for all of this hasn't been very good especially with the Chicago weather. My wife and daughters have been doing snow shoveling for me while I have been laid up. A million thanks to them for this and the thousands of other ways that they are serving me during this time.

I am thankful it is over and I am seeing progress in my recovery. God is good!

Tomorrow's the Day

Well I am about 11 hours away from surgery. We need to be in Chicago between 7 and 7:30 for the surgery to start at 9:00 am. This means that we will be leaving our house around 5:00 am. The weather hasn't been very good but it sounds like there won't be anything new on the roads between now and then.

I am not sure how long I am going to keep the blog going after the surgery. I started it just to talk about random things (hence the name) but it wasn't long before it became my official "liver journal". I have gotten tired of the subject as it has dragged on and on. Who knows maybe I will have the interest to start posting again on some other topic in the future. In the mean time there will definitely be one more entry after I am back on my feet just to give the last chapter in the liver saga.

It sounds like I will be seeing my doctor for the next 2 years for periodic checkups but as far as I am concerned this saga will be over once I am out of the hospital and have regained my strength which will hopefully be within the next few weeks.

Merry Christmas (in case I don't get back online by the 25th)!

Pre-Surgery Checkup

Today was my final visit to Northwestern Memorial prior to my liver surgery. Today's visit was to do the "pre-surgery checkup". This took a couple of hours and was totally painless. I had blood drawn for a number of tests, an EKG taken and a couple of chest x-rays taken. I also had a pretty standard physical from 2 of the doctors (a resident and a more experienced doctor). Everything was good and we are still green for the surgery next week.

Next Tuesday we have to be at the hospital at 6:00 for me to check-in for the surgery. I am keeping my fingers crossed for good weather so that we don't have to leave home too early. Today we weren't sure about the roads with the light snow that we have been having but it was pretty clear and the traffic was kind of heavy for the way in but very light around lunch time on the way out of the city.

We hit my favorite Korean restaurant for lunch in Lisle. I love the bibimbop in the hot stone bowl. Once my meal was done I kept my hands warm on the stone bowl for another 10 minutes as I waited for my wife to finish her meal (did I mention I love bibimbop). One of these days I may have to invest in these heavy stone bowls and have all my winter meals in them (after getting them nice and hot in the oven). :)

Surgery Date

Well I finally got my surgery date, it will be Tuesday, December 16th. It has been difficult for me to be patient through this whole process but I am very thankful for the thorough care that I have been receiving from all people at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

My Oklahoma trip at Thanksgiving was very good. Lots of highlights including a great Thanksgiving meal with lots of family members, fun playing games with my family, and a really good time seeing my best friend and his sons for breakfast one day. My family does the Thanksgiving meal in a big way with turkey and ham, multiple potato/rice dishes, stuffing made a couple of ways, a giant relish tray, corn-on-the-cob (real popular with my younger daughter), and plenty of pie and pumpkin roll. I am sure that I have left out half the contents of the "buffet" line.

For games, my family has a long history of playing a domino game called "moon". The game is similar to spades in cards though the "trump" in moon changes each hand and is called by the team that wins the bid. My grandfather and great-uncle Louie were great "moon" players as is my dad and a number of others from his generation in our family. My cousins and siblings and I all learned to play the game at an early age at family gatherings at my grandparent home. Now my generation is playing and teaching the game to the generation below us. It was fun over Thanksgiving playing with my brother-in-law as my partner and taking on my nephew and my niece's husband. The game is in good hands with these young guys though we handed it to them on this occasion. :)

The other game that the family played was a game called "Personal Preference" which is a fun non-competitive large group game where the objective is to correctly predict the preferences of the rotating person who draws 4 cards in a general category (e.g. food and drink) and has to secretly rank-order them. The game is a lot of fun as you get to learn things about each other and everyone is sharing how they would rank the same items. The family had a lot of fun with about half of the people playing the game for the first time. The funny part is when spouses start arguing about which of two equally bad items is really the least favorite for one of them.

My last thought today is that OU made it into the BCS championship game after handling Missouri pretty easily in the Big 12 championship game. I am keeping my fingers crossed and hope that they can beat Florida in January in the National Championship game. Up until now it has been very important how the team looked in their wins as the rankings are very subjective and based on how well you played. This is over - in the final game they just need to win and it can be of any variety. Here's hoping!!! Boomer Sooner.