Surgery Tomorrow

After a lot of research last week and the creation of a laundry list of questions, I went to see my University of Minnesota surgeon, Dr. Ogilvie, on Friday. I was still trying to figure out what my gut was saying (it wasn't speaking that loudly), and why I hadn't been able to commit to having my next surgery here or at MD Anderson. I've definitely been frustrated by the slow speed of things here, and Dr. Pollock has been so helpful. Add to that the fact that at least some of my travel costs would be reimbursed, along with our non-summer weather, why was I not ready to schedule a trip to Houston?

While it's difficult to reach Dr. Ogilvie, I realized that at appointments, there aren't communication issues. He answers all questions, will pull up the MRI on the computer and explain the image (Friday he was showing the area of the tumor, and made a reference to the elbow joint. When I said "I'll take your word for it," he looked for an image where it was clearer.), and draws pictures to help explain. I have never felt rushed at an appointment, which I'm sure we've all felt with some doctors. So on Friday, we went through my long list of questions, and he answered them all, good naturedly. I think I was with him for an hour and a half. I realized that I trust him, and I feel good about having him do the next surgery. So it's scheduled - for tomorrow at 3pm (I didn't know they did planned surgeries so late!). I had known that a slot for tomorrow was available, and then nothing until July 11th, so it doesn't seem so abrupt to me.

The purpose of the surgery is to remove any residual tumor (they will lengthen the incision and look for tumor above the elbow), and to clean up the remaining tissue, in order to help ensure that they remove both all macroscopic, visible tumor, but also any cancer cells that cannot be seen. They will remove some of the surrounding muscle, but I'm told it should not impact long-term arm function. The MRI I had done on the arm on May 17th (after the last arm surgery to remove the tumor) shows possible residual tumor (especially above where they operated last time), but they cannot totally differentiate tumor from post-surgery edema on the MRI images. Dr. Ogilvie does not believe that things will have changed from the last surgery, even though it's been eight weeks.

Because the surgery is so late in the day, I'll most likely be admitted (Fairview Riverside) for tomorrow night and discharged on Tuesday. I have gotten used to having mostly normal arm function the last few weeks (although my first two fingers are still fairly numb), and not sure how far back this surgery will set me. I did learn that nerve tissue grows an average of 3cm per month. I will post an update as soon as I'm home and feeling like typing.