Update on Recovery for Susan

This is Greg...

Susan had a very rough Wednesday and Thursday.  Tuesday night she started eating.  However, on Wednesday morning, everything started to come back up.  Over the next 9 hours she definitely went down hill mentally and physically.  Doctors finally had an x-ray taken of her belly showing that her bowels just weren't working yet.  With the surgery being so massive, length of surgery and the extend that they had to push the intestins out of the way to get to the lymph nodes, there was a good chance that they would become irritated and shut down.

Without her stomach fluids exiting the bowels, she started becoming extremely nauseous.  They decided to do a NG tube down her nose and into her stomach.  Later that night, we then had to relocate to a different floor.

Thursday was much of the same.  Lots of nausea and lots of pain.  The only way to get intestins to start working was to walk.  She did a very good job walking although the pain was tough.  Most of the pain was coming from a large air bubble in her chest from the surgery.  During the surgery of the hysterectomy, the surgeon had to remove a tube which the massive tumor had to be brought through.  The mass was too big to fit through the tube.  In removing the tube, the seal was broken into the chest and air penetrated the abdomen.

By Thursday night, she finally started to look better in the face, but nausea still lingered.

Friday morning, doctors could hear faint sounds that her bowels were starting to work, but very little.  By afternoon, they were about the same.

Around 4:00 pm, the gynecologist came in with his pathology report.  He also said that although he would not present the breast cancer report, he did have an insight to what it would say.  For the breast cancer, 31 lymph nodes were removed.  Of the 31, only 1 was found to be a 1 cm cancer.  So that's good news.  So all that remains in her body is a 1 cm lymph node behind her chest cavity which cannot be surgically removed.  That will take radiation and chemo.

For the gynecology report, the tumor was 11 cm.  It was found to be a borderline tumor.  So not cancer.  The fallopian tubes, uterus, ovaries and cervix were benign.  None of the lymph nodes removed from pelvis area were cancerous.  So all of this was really good news.  We were thinking this could be a whole new type of cancer such as ovarian.  Although the tumor was all that needed to be removed, removing all the other stuff just keep future cancer to find a place to live.

So as far as the gynecologist goes, he is through with Susan except for future checkups.

We will wait for the breast doctors tomorrow for their report.

Susan has a long ways to go to get bowels working.  Just have to walk and walk and walk.

The nauseous feeling has subsided.  At this point, since Tuesday night, she has had no food or water, not even ice.  She is managing it.

Greg