Pages

One Kidney (and One Tumor) Gone, and He's Going Strong

Unknown Son went under the knife today. And a long day it was.

We got to the hospital by 9:30, and had him on the table by around 11 or so. They completed the first step of the surgery - made a small incision, cut a piece of the mass off, and examined it (by about 1:00 or so).

The good news is that, while it is cancer of some sort, it does NOT appear to be recurrent neuroblastoma. The surgeon said that it seems at first look to be either a mesoblastic nephroma or a sarcoma (we don't know much about these types of cancers, so we'll get back to you with more information later). However, both these possibilities are far less serious than recurrent neuroblastoma, so we take it as good news. We won't know for sure until the full pathologist report comes back, probably on Thursday or Friday.

The next step was to remove the kidney (a "nephrectomy" in medical terms). It took quite a while -- about 7 hours (rather than the expected 4) because of the scar tissue from his previous surgery and radiation. But that's just fine with us - the surgeon wasn't in a rush to get home, so we'd rather he took as long as necessary.

The Little Guy is resting comfortably in the PIC (Pediatric Intensive Care) unit. He'd better be with all the drugs they pumped into him. In fact, since he's got a breathing tube, they'll keep him well sedated until tomorrow morning at the earliest. So, he's sleeping about as soundly as possible, and probably a lot better than his folks.

He's comfortable, and there won't be anything happening until morning. So, since She Who Must Be Obeyed and I will probably have our share of sleep-deprived nights in the near future, we took the option of going home to sleep in our own bed. We'll come back in the morning for the waking of the lad and the removal of the tube.

Unknown Son has lately gotten interested in Greek Mythology ( was a big fan when I was his age, and I think I gave him the bug), so I'm sure I'll be reading some (actually, a lot of) stories from the books on mythology I got from the library yesterday (we figured he'd be here for a while, so we did plan ahead).

Stay tuned - I'll update when we know more.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

  • Stiglitz the Keynesian... Web review of economics: Stigliz has an article, "Capitalist Fools", in the January issue of Vanity Fair. He argues that the new depression is the result of:Firing...
  • It's Never Enough Until Your He... Web review of economics: Aaron Swartz quotes a paper by Louis Pascal posing a thought experiment. I wonder if many find this argument emotionally unsatisfying. It...
  • Michele Boldrin Confused About Marx... Web review of economics: Michele Boldrin has written a paper in which supposedly Marxian themes are treated in a Dynamic Stochastic Equilibrium Model (DSGE). He...
  • Negative Price Wicksell Effect, Pos... Web review of economics: 1.0 IntroductionI have previously suggested a taxonomy of Wicksell effects. This post presents an example with:The cost-minimizing...
  • Designing A Keynesian Stimulus Plan... Web review of economics: Some version of this New York Times article contains the following passage:"A blueprint for such spending can be found in a study financed...
  • Robert Paul Wolff Blogging On Books... Web review of economics: Here Wolff provides an overview of Marx, agrees with Morishima that Marx was a great economist, and mentions books by the analytical...
  • Simple and Expanded Reproduction... Web review of economics: 1.0 IntroductionThis post presents a model in which a capitalist economy smoothly reproduces itself. The purpose of such a model is not to...
  • How Individuals Can Choose, Even Th... Web review of economics: 1.0 IntroductionI think of this post as posing a research question. S. Abu Turab Rizvi re-interprets the primitives of social choice theory...