Good News

Our friend Bob just had lung surgery and is in the recovery room. His hopes came through on how it would happen. They were biopsying a part of his left lung and removing the spot while they were in there. He will have a 5% reduction in his lung volume.

Basically, he was hoping for a surgical robot surgery success through a small hole, versus that failing and surgeons having to open him up to perform much more invasive surgery. It is the difference between leaving the hospital tomorrow vs. many hospital days in the hospital and severe pain. They did it with the robot and he will most likely head home tomorrow.

Hang in there Bob.

Good deal!

Best wishes for a speedy recovery Bob!

Eric wrote:

Our friend Bob just had lung surgery and is in the recovery room.  His hopes came through on how it would happen.  They were biopsying a part of his left lung and removing the spot while they were in there.  He will have a 5% reduction in his lung volume.

Basically, he was hoping for a surgical robot surgery success through a small hole, versus that failing and surgeons having to open him up to perform much more invasive surgery.  It is the difference between leaving the hospital tomorrow vs. many hospital days in the hospital and severe pain.  They did it with the robot and he will most likely head home tomorrow.

Hang in there Bob.

That's GREAT news!.....

I am so happy to hear that... thank you for the great news, E!! Wishing Bob a speedy recovery!

Amazing if the recovery goes as they described using the robotic method.

Best wishes Bob.

He even called me later. He said they have him up, walking a little in the hall, and sitting up in a chair.

He said he hasn't felt better. (Of course, it is probably due to a ton of opioids, y'know?)

Get well soon Bob...

Hooray for pain killers! Haha. I'm so glad he is doing so well.

Seriously, it is really good that he's feeling so well even with the opoids. I was in so much pain after my shoulder surgery that on day 2 I passed out and day 3 I ended up laying on the floor of the PT office sobbing, and that was with oxycodone and the drip directly into my shoulder from surgery (I think it's called a q-pump). They had to call my surgeon.

A little piece of advice... don't try to play tough guy after surgery. It doesn't work out well. When it hurts that bad it means something is wrong. Duh.

Go, Bob, go! Woohoo!!

I got an email today from Bob.

---

I wasn't feeling the pain as long as they had me on the morphine in the hospital. But once I came home without the morphine
the pain is pretty much excruciating. I cannot even imagine what the pain must be like with the open lung surgery because
the pain associated with the robotic surgery is way bad enough.
Right now I'm taking two 5 mg oxycontins every four hours. By hour 3 the pain starts to make me cringe.
The worst is coughing. I have to cough to bring up stuff out of my lung to avoid pneumonia.

Maybe he needs to ask for Percocet or something else. Certain opoids don't work well on certain people and it's not a matter of strength of the dose. Or maybe he needs to get a script for morphine.



Dammit. I hope he starts feeling better really soon.

At this time he's not in pain for the most part, but the biopsy showed it was melanoma... not good at all.  He also has 5 more nodes in his lung that the surgeon wasn't too concerned about.  But, Bob sure is worried.  He's considering going to Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center for an analysis.  He figures he is going to get a port and get chemo, but wants lots of opinions.

Keep him in your prayers, please.

Bob is most certainly in my prayers. It breaks my heart to know he is sick. It's always the best of us, isn't it?

I hope Bob gets the news he wants and gets the treatments started so he can beat the cancer.. I'm praying for him..

Thanks so much to everyone who gave me your well wishes in this thread. You are wonderful folks.

Next Monday I start six months of treatment. It will be what they call "immunotherapy" vs "chemotherapy".
It will consist of 3 months of one drug followed by 3 months of another.

The first drug stimulate my body's immune system. Specifically the T cells which are the ones which will attack the cancer cells.
The second drug unmasks the tumors so the body's natural immune system can find them and destroy them.

The problem with cancerous tumors is the tumors conceal themselves from the body's immune system by putting a layer of protein over the tumor. This masks them so they fly under the radar of the immune system. The immune system doesn't recognize them as toxic.
But the new immunotherapy drugs work to unmask the tumors so the immune system itself can find them and destroy them.
It doesn't work for every patient but hopefully it will work for me. Time will tell.

You will kick cancer's ass, Bob. I know you will.

That is interesting about how tumors conceal themselves. I did not know that. Just more ways in which cancer is so f'ed. Please keep us updated as you are able to Bob. We have been really worried about you.

riceme wrote:

You will kick cancer's ass, Bob. I know you will.

That is interesting about how tumors conceal themselves. I did not know that. Just more ways in which cancer is so f'ed. Please keep us updated as you are able to Bob. We have been really worried about you.

You are correct 'riceme'......"cancer is so f'ed up"!.....IT'S TIME FOR SOME WINS AGAINST THIS MONSTER.....