Heart Shaped tumor

Aug 5
1 pm

Finally got to the hospital after a 1.5 hour commute. And I said I love Seattle? :-)

When I got to Vic's room, he was sitting up in side chair, watching TV. He was talkative and looked good. Earlier, Vic had gone for a walk with a walker and the help of a nurse. When I returned from getting some lunch, he was dozing upright in his chair. He was able to get into his bed for a nap without much assistance from the nurse.

What I could get out of him . . .he's a little foggy . . is that they took the entire adrenal gland and the tumor. The tumor was very close to the kidney blood supply so the surgery took longer to avoid him losing that kidney.

The preliminary results should be in today or tomorrow. In fact, his boss (a medical pathologist) signed his get well card, "looking forward to receiving your specimen and more importantly having you back at work". His coworkers stopped by his room in ICU this morning and I just met up with one of them. Phil (coworker had to get me logged onto the wireless Internet) said that when they saw Vic about 10 am, Vic was groggy and out of it. Lot's of pain meds, yeah!!!

Vic is down to one IV (from 2 or 3 IVs). He still has his catheter as his "output" didn't match the "input". They plan to move him to a regular room once he has lunch and a room is ready for him. At 11:30 am and when I left his room at 1 pm, they were still waiting for a menu so he could order lunch. Rules, rules, rules. I offered to just go down to the cafeteria but Vic didn't want to break any rules. That's our Vic!

The plan is that he leave the hospital tomorrow, Wednesday. I'm not too keen on that as there will not be anyone available to stay with him. Guess it all depends on how he is today and tomorrow.


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2:00 pm
He is in his own room! Yippeee!! Took about an hour for the boy to get some food and he's kept it down so far. He is taking the bare minimum of pain meds and he is staying pretty lucid.

We had to monitor his oxygen for a couple of hours and it has now been removed - he's holding steady. Just waiting for the catheter to come out . . . nurse staff change right now (3:30). Once that's out, we'll see if he wants a stroll down memory lane. . . okay, down the hall way.