The Surgery Report!

Hi, this is Lisa again!

The surgery went amazingly, awesomely, wonderfully well!

Well, the scenario wasn't the cool miraculous possibility that Ben and I half-joked about, that the surgeon (Dr. Mann) would open him up and *Voila* no tumors left! But, there are no tumors now!!

So we checked in at 10:45am as scheduled. The surgery didn't really start until 1pm, or possibly 1:30 depending on how you define "start," but they kept Ben pretty busy with a little paperwork, questions about allergies, the epidural insertion, etc. He was definitely shaking as he anticipated what was about to happen, but as my dad pointed out later in the day, even Jesus got nervous anticipating trials to come :)

Ben's parents, my parents, me, and Beth (for awhile, until she went back to school) waited in the "surgery waiting room," which has THE phone. Every couple hours a nurse would call and give us an update, which put us more at our ease as we waited in the comfy armchairs, talking and occupying ourselves in various other ways.

Less than 6 hours later, Dr. Mann walked in and gave us his report! There were hundreds of tiny tumors in Ben's abdomen, but he had removed them all-- praise God! That was one of my worries, but it was solved. AND, amazingly, none of the intestine or bladder had to be removed, so the digestive tract is completely *intact*! That meant that Ben didn't need to go to the ICU at all, but was able to be transfered straight from Recovery to the hospital. Also, his recovery will be quicker, and there will be less concerns about him eating!

I laughed when I heard what Dr. Mann did remove: Ben's appendix! Of all the organs in his abdomen that could be completely ridden with tumors, that was it, which is so cool! Many people have them easily removed and live in normal health without them. No appendicitis for Ben. Also, Dr. Mann removed a little of Ben's liver, which isn't a big deal.
He told us that the large tumor between Ben's bladder and rectum was about the size of a baseball, or maybe a little larger, and difficult to remove. Fortunately he was able to take it out and only scraped the walls of bladder and rectum, which required a little "patching" but not "resectioning."

After we heard the results we waited around a bit more, then found Ben's hospital room and waited there until he arrived from Recovery. When he got wheeled into the room, I was surprised to see that his eyes were open and that he was talking! Coherently! He was feeling a little nauseous and had additional tubing protruding from his body, but he seemed to be feeling pretty well otherwise. We happily told him about how well the surgery had gone. He said that he had some interesting dreams during the surgery and was irritated to be woken up from them by a pain in his stomach.

So, to wrap this up, praise God! I'm so glad he responded to our prayers with affirmatives and that we can praise him for that!

Ben would love visitors, but I think for the first couple days we should keep it "lite". Starting Thursday, though, just talk to Jenifer Morrell or I and we'll happily tell you all about where Ben's room is. I think he'll probably be there for a week and a half, but we'll see :)

Good night!