Success!

After a long seven hour surgery yesterday Alex's doctors were able to successfully remove the entire tumor, the stem, and all apparent roots. Alex's mom and I received much appreciated updates from the OR throughout the day. His doctor said he was stable throughout the process and as a surgeon, he was "very happy." At 5:00 we were able to go in and see him in the ICU and all things considered, he looked good {which isn't so hard for someone so handsome :)}. Because he had tolerated the surgery so well & was able to breathe on his own by evening, but had a lot of fluid in his lung, it was decided to begin to wake him up so he could begin coughing to try and get the fluid working it's way out. We had a bit of a set back at this point.

The way pain is now managed with this type of surgery is through epidural. While Alex was still in the OR, he was given an epidural so that as he awoke and the sedation from surgery wore off, the epidural would have his mid-section numb. Unfortunately, Alex's epidural didn't take. As he began to gain consciousness, he could feel everything. Although we couldn't tell exactly what was wrong, it was obvious to Heidi and I that things were going as hoped. Heidi and I were quickly asked to leave and were later told by Dr. Linuti that Alex could feel the incision, his lung, the chest tubes, the catheters, everything! His body was so stiff from the pain that they had to put him under again to re-administer the epidural. After a long & very sad 3 hours, success was achieved and he was finally comfortable and slightly awake-- awake enough to get some good coughs out and even open his eyes a little, crack a slight smile, and give a thumbs up.