My Dad - Surgery Update

My dad came through surgery well. The mass they removed was larger than a cantaloupe!! The good news is they were able to spare my dad's kidney - instead of removing the kidney, they shaved the mass off of it. They also had to shave the mass off the spleen and pancreas. The bad news is that they had to remove the adrenal gland because it was dead! That was shocking but might explain why my dad felt so run down all the time. I don't know if he will require any type of medication, etc. in the future since he now has only one adrenal gland. (Arguably he only had one before the operation since the second one was dead.)

The doctor said that the mass was horrible looking and he had never seen anything like it. The pathology on it should be back late today or on Friday. It's a 50/50 chance of it being cancer. So what in the world is this giant mass if it's not cancer? I'm told the doctor's theory is that the adrenal gland hemorrhaged and then formed this "thing." This thing then fed on everything causing it to grow. We'll know more when we get the pathology results.

Dad stayed in the ICU last night. He's got a pain pump (I don't know what pain medicine they are using) and an epidural. The epidural they are going to leave in for a couple days. Pain-wise it's bad that they had to cut on dad's pancreas. Apparently it influences a lot of other organs and tends to get pissed off when you cut on it, so to speak. Talk about cruel - as though dad wasn't going to be in enough pain anyway from such a major operation! Dad also said his bad shoulder was bothering him since he was on his side with his arm up over his head for the operation.

I was not able to be there for the surgery and haven't been to the hospital. Two reasons for that: 1) The truck isn't running well enough to drive out of The Woodlands - Ben drives the Honda to work.
2) My stupid health! The prednisone really got me this time. I look like the Pillsbury doughgirl from all the edema. It's terrible and painful. My doctors haven't officially declared it but basically I have Cushing's Syndrome due to the steroids. The "fix" - weaning off steroids, which is what I am doing. I can only go down 5 mg per week though - agonizing! I started at 40 mg; Saturday I go down to 15 mg. The only thing I can do is wait it out and I hate it! Anyway, the edema is so bad that if I walk much my lower back starts killing me!! I was also worried about sitting around the waiting room of a hospital with my (hopefully) depressed immune system.

I may see if Ben can take me up this weekend. That way he can grab a wheel chair at the front desk to avoid the walking issue.

Other things of note:
Grammy made it home from the hospital Monday night - yea! Of course, the only thing they solved was her pneumonia, but that's better than nothing!

My Humira is being delivered today so I will probably start it today or tomorrow. (This is in place of the Remicade which we discovered wasn't working when I ended up in the hospital in February).

That's enough info for now!