Hey everyone. Dropping by to say hi and give a short-ish update.
I'm two weeks past surgery today and both the surgery and recovery are going well, according to doctors.
Re: the surgery itself, the specialist says it went exactly as he'd hoped, basically best-case scenario. The tumor was growing on the side where the robotic arm thingies approach, so that was better than trying to excise a tumor from the other side of the kidney. It "started" near the edge and then grew outward, so in removing it, he said he was able to preserve roughly 90% of the kidney. So I still have, like, 1.9 kidneys. Nice. The pathology report came back golden, sans the part confirming renal cell carcinoma. The edges were clear, meaning the doc got all of the tumor, the remaining kidney tissue shows no sign of cancer. There was no necrosis, meaning the tumor was removed prior to damaging tissue around it. There was no evidence of lymphatic....uh....something...some word I don't remember. Meaning the tumor was confined to its main location with no sign that the cancer spread to any lymph nodes, thus no invasion of other organs. Technically, I am considered in full remission, and future prognosis is very good (chance of re-occurrence is very low).
Re: recovery. Okay.....I appear to have had an overly optimistic view of how fast I'd bounce back from major abdominal surgery. I've had multiple surgeries, mostly on my feet, which kept me on crutches for weeks afterwards, but which left my ready to do anything possible to do on crutches, and that was kind of my baseline for expectations, but I was just wrong. While I retained more mobility with this one, it kicked my ass in ways the others just didn't. A small bit of that may be due to the difference in mid-40's vs. mid-30's, but my wife and doctors tell me mostly it's just the difference between peripheral surgery vs. major organ surgery. The pain during recovery wasn't so bad, or at least it didn't last too long. I took prescription pain medication for less than a week. While I'm not allowed to lift more than 5 lbs. for several weeks--and I can feel the pain when my dumb ass does it anyway--sitting around, laying down, walking around, etc. is not bad at all. I've been able to walk around the block with my wife for several days now. The kidney area itself is tender, so sitting back against a chair and laying on my back or right side can get quite uncomfortable, but I wouldn't say "painful." The biggest things have been short bursts of low-grade fever, particularly in the evenings, and the overwhelming fatigue. Both of those things are normal, says my doc, and both are getting incrementally better. Though my primary doc says it will likely be months before I'll be completely done with the fatigue. I was released to work from home last Wednesday, and that's going pretty well. I don't have problems sitting here at my desk, it's just that after lunch, I feel tired and just want to be done. However much rest I manage to work in during the day, I'm still ready for bed by like 9:30 and sleep all night, which I'd usually have trouble with if I doze during the day.
Cosmetically, I look like I took six bullets to the gut--they're the places the robot arms and cameras went in--the current glaring scars of which will eventually fade into much less noticeable scars, and I'm hoping will turn my wife on, cuz chicks dig scars, I hear. Unfortunately she knows I didn't get them doing something cool, so that might not help me any.
Finally--speaking of my wife, who is a Texas fan--I've mostly been watching just the LSU and Texas games. Watching these offenses/quarterbacks is like pulling infected teeth with no anesthesia. I swear I'm hurting my recovery time by making myself sit through these abominations. I hope ol' Nuss and Arch got cancellation insurance with those flights to the Heisman ceremony.....
