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Back home from the cardiac surgeon and the news is as good as possible.

Sandi is healing up from the previous deal fairly well. They did a chest x-ray and that was okay. Both the surgical sites are still draining as they very slowly close. There were no stitches to remove as we had both understood when she was in the hospital. She still has a tremendous amount of pain in her right side and across the right side of her chest. In theory, this should slowly get better over time as the nerves in her ribcage that were compressed gradually heal up.

Instead of the nightmare scenario of cracking the ribs, stopping the heart deal, the doc is going to try to come from just underneath the breastbone and going vertically to get beneath her heart. Basically at the top of the stomach where the diaphragm and all meet and then slightly over to the right will be his entry point. Another one will be along her collar bone in the center of his chest. He plans to come from both angle to get to the thing. How much he removes will depend on what the situation is when he finally gets to it. He may try and take the whole thing or he might just take enough for pathology and not disturb it further.

He won't know how that will go until he gets to it. He also discussed his plans for putting the port back into her chest. This port thing, which she hates and causes here a lot of pain, hooks directly into the main artery in the heart. It is necessary so the chemo and other drugs can go straight to the heart and then be circulated through the body.

If things work on right, later today we should get called about scheduling this attempt. Most likely it will not be next week, but instead, sometime the following week. In the meantime she is to get well and get over the cold she still has somewhat, avoid the flu, and monitor her blood sugar so they have some idea what it is doing pre-surgery.

They also just got back the pathology on the stuff he pulled out before Christmas and all that came back clean. That means that if this thing is cancer--as all still believes it to be--it is most likely localized and not spreading rampant like her two previous forms of Non-Hodgkin's lyphomas were this time last year. That means chemo and radiation have a better chance of taking it out again.

So, now we wait for the phone calls......