Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Wednesday Morning

Greg here, I made sure to arrive at Patsy's room in time to catch her surgeon, Dr Horbelt, making his 6 AM rounds. He got here around 7.



He's a jovial guy and seems to really put her at ease.

There was really no new information but it was the first time Patsy had gotten to talk to him, post-surgery. He went over the same stuff he told me yesterday - that her tumor was a "tumor of low malignant potential" - not cancer and not necessarily benign. He said it is "low suspicion". This is an improvement over the "highly suspicious" status the radiologist had given it.

I asked him about the size of the tumor, as most of the estimates of its size we've heard have been related to sports equipment or fruit. Dr Horbelt says he prefers sports equipment comparisons because such things are standardized. "If you say orange, how do you know you didn't get a wienie orange" he had previously said. To satisfy me, he gave a number - 16 centimeters - not bragging size, he added.



I still want clarification, especially as to how something that isn't cancer can have even a slim chance of being malignant, but he doesn't speculate and says to wait for the results. He reminded us that the pathology report would be in Thursday or Friday and at that point he'll be able to go into greater detail.



He removed her bandage, checked her over and told her to get up and sit in a chair today and to try drinking some fluids if she likes (she can even have pop as long as it's flat). Her incision looks neatly done and stapled.



I hope to return you to your regularly scheduled Patsy later today. She is hitting the morphine pump button less often and is more normal all the time.

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