April 19, 2012

So we had to go in for a last minute echo this morning in preparation for surgery. Seriously they called at 9:25 and said our appointment was at 10; And that was the first we heard of it. The surgeon, Dr. La Quaglia, is very thorough. Though his reputation precedes him, he still managed to impress (and even intimidate) you with his genius. Surgery is this man's life. It like the Ron White joke talking about bouncers who hang out with their bouncer friends and talk about bouncing. This man is that, only about surgery. And you never know when he might spout out a random fact about surgery.  Anyhow, the man is on the shorter side, has hands smooth as a baby's butt, is impeccably thorough and is a genius. But he wants you to be prepared for the bad. He doesn't want you to be blindsided, so he is blunt. So I'm going to tell you like he told us because I have a lot of respect for being told like it is.

This is a major surgery. It is life threatening. The tumor is no longer wrapped around his vena cava, but the artery to his kidney does run through it. There is a 3% chance of losing the kidney. He will be losing his adrenal gland which is OK, we are hoping that his left adrenal gland will function fine. If not, he'll just take a pill everyday. He will have a lot of tubes coming out of him after surgery and his eyes will likely be taped shut. He will most likely be sedated and on a ventilator for two days. We discovered yesterday that he has rhinovirus (mild cold) and if that causes any problems, then he could be on a ventilator longer. Hopefully it won't. It will not be easy to see him this way, but we know he has the best people in the world looking after him.
George and I also got a good look at the tumor on the CT scans and can see how considerably it has shrunk. We also had a long talk with the neuroblastoma doctor and confirmed what we already knew and shed some light on a few things as well. More on that later...nothing big to report there.
Right now our mothers and grandmother should be arriving and we are going to take him to the park and let him run around and be a little boy!

Here are some pics of his first trip to Memorial Sloan: