5/27/08 Evening
Today was eventful, Judy woke up quite nauseated ... which was probably from the stressful anticipation of the surgeries and I woke up so tired that I could hardly walk three steps without breathing so heavily I would have to stop and rest. I think I just had a touch of the flu, as I am feeling better this evening. We left for the hospital a little after 9 AM, after Judy got a blessing from me and John. We got to the hospital right on the money at 10:15 AM. They registered us and we thought we would visit a friend in the cardiac center while we were waiting to be called in. We mentioned this to the intake personnel and they said they thought we would be called in right away. There were probably 30 people waiting in the outpatient surgery room, but they called us first ... we weren't sitting for more than a minute or two. Judy was put in a "clean room" to prepare. They, of course, had her put on one of their gowns (reminded me of the dance in the movie Parent Trap, where one twin cut a pie shaped piece out of the back of the other twin's skirt, without her know it ... which meant that she went back into the dance missing a critical piece.)

Since it is a teaching hospital there was a string of nurses, anesthesiologists, doctors and surgeons that poured through her room asking questions, feeling her neck, hooking up lines, flushing her midline and trying to decide how best to approach the two procedures. When the actual surgeon came in, he felt her neck and mentioned that it was not a single lymph node but rather an aggregation of them. I asked if he was going to remove it entirely. He said not, because it would leave too big a hole in her neck, that he was only going to take a good biopsy.

They did not put her under general anesthetic since she has heart breathing problems already, just gave her enough anesthesia to keep her from knowing what was going on. The teaching surgeon put the porta cath in, but let one of the resident's take the biopsy. They were right on schedule, getting her in a littler before 12:15 PM and getting her into recovery by 1:10 PM. The surgeon came out and said that both procedures went well and that she tolerated them well. She was in recovery about 20 minutes, when they put her back in another "clean room". She was there another 30 minutes or so while they prepared her release instructions and gave her a double dose of pain killers (Lortab). Aunt Bunny and Uncle Barry came to see how she was doing, and brought her a cute little pot of yellow flowers. They were shown into the recovery room and stayed with us until we left the hospital.

Judy got home about 3:30 PM or so and went directly to bed and mostly slept until about 7:00 PM. She got up and ate dinner (potato soup that Amy made) and visited a little while before going back to bed.

Now we wait again, two or three days for the pathology reports to come back on the new biopsy. Hopefully the report will tell us what type of cancer it is and we can then begin treatments.

While there, I made an appointment with one of the cardiologists in their Cardiology Center, hoping that I can get a little better treatment for my heart (which has lost a full third of its pumping capacity during the last six months since I had the last two stints put in ... down from 75% to 42%). Only time will tell!

We saw Adam Nelson while there, a couple of times. Once in the cardiology unit where he works and the second time when he brought one of his patients out to the valet parking where we were waiting to pick up our car. He said that I would really like my new cardiologist! I sure hope he is right!