Surgery

Surgery........for this particular part of our journey we didn't prepare very well.  When we met with the Neurosurgeon, he said that Dan could be out of the hospital in 24-48 hours.  We both interpreted that to mean that the surgery was somehow less serious, or invasive than it was.  Let's face it, they were going to cut open his head and remove a huge tumor that had invaded a very sensitive area of the body.  In hindsight, none of that sounds like something that warrants being discharged from the hospital in 24 hours.  But away we went, and really, what choice did we have?

Our check in time at the hospital was 9:30am.  After prepping him in pre-op, they brought me back to wait, and wait, and wait some more.  The surgery prior to ours ran long, so Dan got in to surgery about the time we had expected him to come out.  So we waited.  And surgery ran a little long, so we waited yet again.  Finally, we got notice they were finishing up and the surgeon would be out shortly to talk to us (myself, my dad, and step-mom).  The good news:  the surgeon was able to remove all of the tumor, including the part that had just begun to grow into the brain stem. The tumor had been blocking the area that drains spinal fluid, and upon removal, it began to drain again on it's own.  This was great news, as plan B would have required a tube to be placed in Dan's head to re-route the drainage of the fluid.  The bad news: initial pathology showed that the tumor was malignant and did not originate in the brain, but had spread from somewhere else.

After recovery, they moved Dan into ICU (standard procedure) for 24 hours, then we were able to move to the neuro wing of the hospital.  Now it was just a matter of waiting for the final pathology report.