Day 4 in Boston

Trent seemed better today.  We were able to stay with him for about 2 1/2 hours this morning before surgery.  I noticed he had some swelling in his legs and his left arm.  I was a little concerned about that but was reassured by the nurses that it was because of the fluids they were giving him.  I got Trent all cleaned up and even combed his hair.  I love that he has enough hair to comb!  Okay, I really just washed over it with a washcloth, like I did to all my babies.  But it was still fun! 

The procedure today was just to put a permanent drain in the pericardium wall so the fluid could keep draining into his chest cavity and be reabsorbed by his body.  He went in at 2:30 pm and around 4:00 Dr. DaSilva came to talk to me.  Everything went okay.  He had to put in two drains, the one in the pericardium and another in his lung because he had another pleural effusion.  He had to drain another 1 1/2 liters from the pericardium.  He was also concerned about the size of Trent's left arm.  It is almost twice as big as the right arm now.  He fears there is a blood clot in Trent's arm.  He also said he could see that the tumor had invaded the pericardium and was probably causing the bleeding.  He does not know if that part of the tumor is dead though.  He is rushing the biopsy results and we are hoping to get them tomorrow or Monday.  Dr. DaSilva also said that Trent is malnourished and nobody could see it.  He is such a big strong looking guy that when you look at him you think he is fine.  But his blood work says he is malnourished.  They may decided to put in a feeding tube to pump him full of nourishment 24/7. 

Tomorrow morning they will ultrasound his arm for clots.  The treatment for that is blood thinners, which they don't really want to give him because of the bleeding in his chest. The chest tubes will come out probably by Sunday and he should be pretty much recovered by Monday or Tuesday.  Once we know the test results we can make a plan for surgery, or whatever the next step is. 

When I finally got to see Trent he was pretty out of it. He was not in too much pain, yet. They don't use incentive spirometers here so I will have to keep reminding Trent to cough and breathe deep. Within the next hour he was pressing the button for pain medicine as much as he could. I asked if there was anything I could get him and all he wanted was breadsticks. Tomorrow he will be allowed to eat, and we hope he will have a healthy appetite.


Right after surgery.

Trent and Nate a couple hours post surgery.

The nurse kept wanting Trent to cough so she turned on his bed massager.  She said lots of people don't like it but Trent loved it.  It went on for about 30 minutes and he loved every minute of it! 

By the time we left him tonight he was looking much better.  We are hoping and praying for good news to come.  Hopefully this doesn't set us back too much.  We see and hear about other patients who have undergone the same surgery and they are handling the surgery very well which gives me a lot of hope for Trent, especially considering these people are 30+ years older than he is.  If we can get him healthy enough to do the surgery soon he will do great.  Before we came I tried to prep myself to handle the ups and downs of the situation, knowing that it probably wasn't going to go as smoothly as the doctors lay it out.  Well, here we are, in one of the downs, but the only way to go is up and that is where we are headed.