Tag Archives: thoracoscopy

Observations from the hospital


Michele is doing well. The kids got to visit for a short time tonight, which was great medicine for everyone. Our daughter hit every automatic hand sanitizer in the place, entering and exiting, and should be germ free to the bone until 2012. My apologies to the Germ-X refill guy. I assume tomorrow Michele will be taking the wheel of this ship back from “Gilligan” and hitting me repeatedly with her hat. I will leave you all with a few observations from the hospital:

People complain about hospital food but the fried chicken is always good. Always.

Kids don’t have the life experience to fill in the blanks. This can serve them well or scare them to death. You can only hope they open up enough to give you a clue as to what they do and do not understand.

“Scrubs” should not be allowed on hospital televisions. It really underscores how completely unfunny real hospitals are.

Insurance, prescription drugs and other woes aside, modern medicine is really pretty incredible.

Somebody needs to invent wireless heart/chest monitors. It looks like somebody dropped a giant marionette on the bed.

Etc., etc…It’s been a long day. There are still questions to be answered, but today went about as well as we could have hoped for. I don’t know what battles we have ahead, but right now…tonight…I feel like a pretty blessed, lucky guy. Thanks for checking in and following this blog. It means a lot to her. And she’s right. It’s pretty darn therapeutic. Goodnight.

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Goodbye Stupid Tumor


Hello. Cub reporter Michele’s Husband coming to you live from the hospital. The surgery is done. The tumor was fairly easy for them to remove and the procedure went well. Quickly too! The doctor was able to remove the tumor thoracoscopically (I’m fairly certain all those letters are a real word) through 4 or 5 small “ports”. I should probably know how many, but I’m not counting them now. Anyway, the port on her lower chest is a little bit larger to accommodate removing the stupid little tumor. The initial pathology is non-conclusive so we have to wait for more results to see what the next step is. If there even is a next step. We will know something about the pathology by Monday and should have a detailed evaluation in about a week. It will be a long week. Michele is in the ICU right now and doing well. She’s sitting up, groggily, and is connected to various wires and tubes. Once the chest tube (the big painful one) is able to come out, she can come home. Hopefully that will be Saturday. Thanks to everyone for all your thoughts and prayers. We’ll keep you posted. One last note. I just got a mumbled request to inform you that her chest hurts and it’s worse when she coughs.

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