Update Tuesday, Feb. 10th

Hello all,

Bob is still in ICU recovering from yesterday's surgery and will remain there for the foreseeable future, at least for a number of days. The three surgical departments who worked on him yesterday (urology, plastic and vascular) all came in today and briefed us on what's next.

Pending receipt of the final pathology reports from tissue removed during surgery yesterday, plans are to cover his wound using either his skin or muscles from within the groin area. The skin option is preferred because it is a less intrusive surgery, which means healing occurs more quickly. The muscle surgery would be the stretching/moving of what is called the rectus muscle to cover the arteries/wound area. A third and much less desirable option is to graft tissue/muscle from another area of his body, which would require extensive suturing of veins for the transplanted tissue. Using skin or tissue/muscle from the groin area is much preferred because it can be moved to cover the wound without detaching it from its current location, hence adequate blood flow would be ensured. Whatever option is used, the surgery will most likely take place two days from now, IF the pathology report doesn't show a need to go back in and remove more cancer first. The surgeons only want to do this once, so there is no sense in covering the wound now and then reopening it for another cancer removal surgery. The overall goal is to get the wound covered, avoid infections and start the chemo treatments.

Bob is now off morphine, at his request, and is receiving lesser pain medications intravenously. He is in pain, but he says it is manageable. His vital signs are all within normal ranges. He is very tired, as we would be were we in his shoes, hence he is still unable to have visitors. He also remains in isolation, although all infectious bacteria cultures taken during yesterday's surgeries came back negative. He also continues to have a normal temperature. All of these are good, and actually amazing signs. He remains on three IV antibiotics as well as other required meds. He is able to eat and drink clear food and fluids. More good news is that he is hungry and would love to have a couple of tacos (perhaps in a couple of days). His color is good and no new transfusions were required yesterday or today. The docs want him to sit up if he can tolerate it and possibly even sit in a chair. A physical therapy regimen was also ordered. We hope he can do that, but it will be a big challenge to do so in the immediate future.

Anyway, that's the latest. We'll post more if anything new develops. In any event, we will continue with our daily updates until we regain a semblance of normalcy.

Oh, and by the way, he smiles when we tell him of your blog messages. Feel free to leave a comment, or even ANOTHER comment if you have already done so.

Thanks again for everything.

The Freemans