Surgery for Christmas

I met with Dr Denys this morning and got some answers.

The biggest questions I had were

• Where will the cut be and how long?
• Will the surgery be more like the first or second surgery as far as recovery?
• When could I do it?

He answered these and even drew me a nice picture. If you have ever gone to see Dr Denys there is a good chance he has drawn you a picture. I asked him to draw a line on my neck where the incision will be so that I can show my wife. He just made a small dot which is going to be the top of the incision. It is about an inch below my jaw bone under my ear. This means I will have a vertical cut this time where the previous cut was mostly horizontal and low. Good news is that it is mainly skin and fat tissue that will be cut so there will be very little or any messing with muscle, nerves, etc...Hopefully that means it will heal quickly. (Maybe a post Christmas snowboarding trip is still a possibility)

I edited the drawing with photoshop to show the green area in his drawing is where lymph nodes have been removed already. The yellow area is where he will remove more lymph nodes. The theory is that if we remove just the one lymph node again we may see another in a few months. There could be small cancer cells in the other lymph nodes that are not able to be detected yet. If we remove all of them then we will increase the odds of not having to do this again. 

I scheduled the surgery for Dec 18th. Which is the day I went into the MTC back in 1996 14 years ago. Man I am getting old. 

It could be an outpatient surgery with a drainage tube/bag but there is a chance I would stay a day at the hospital. We will have to wait and see. He said to plan on going home but bring a bag just in case. 

Dr Denys said the surgery would last around 1.5 hours and he knew exactly what needed to be removed and what he was going to be doing. There is not going to be much or any exploring or discovery while I am sliced open and under.  

He said the drain tube would stay in for maybe 3 days and then he could take it out. So hopefully by Christmas I will be feeling mostly recovered and ready to play with the kids.