Dear Family,
Yes, Suki, I did feel you all with me yesterday. I had five friends who pretty much spent the day with me. Their presence and knowing people from all over were concerned really did help. (By the way, when the surgeon came out, he talked to me with my friends. After he left, one of the most organized of the group took a notepad and said, "Let's repeat what he said, and write down what we heard." So, she did that for me. Then, when the surgeon came to Paul's room, I asked him to read what we thought we heard and he concurred, so I feel like what I'm telling Paul and others is correct.) Just a little tip in case any of you find yourself in that situation....)
The tumor was malignant, but not huge, and was contained within the bowel wall, protruding into the inside of the colon (what they saw in the colonoscopy). The surgeon got all of the tumor and assured me all of the surrounding organs looked perfectly normal. They removed 16" of the large intestine and 4" of the small intestine. (They assured me that was a "generous margin".) Lymph nodes are located all along the outer bowel in the lining that covers it. (It has a name, I can't remember it.) Those, of course, will be analyzed, but we won't have the pathology report until Monday. So it will be a long week-end for us. He will be in the hospital at least until Tueday to be sure his digestive system is working...Hard to make that happen since he's had no food since Tuesday, and only gets saline for two days post-surgery. I'm happy he's there, though. It's quite an incision and he was heavily sedated last night. I'm hoping he's going to be feeling better when I go in this morning.
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