# Prayers and wishes for a quick recovery requested



## Sinjz (Jan 24, 2007)

I don't typically post these type of personal things, but something about CPF makes it feel alright to do so.

My father is going under the knife in the morning to remove a cancerous mass about the size of a walnut; It's under his tounge. They are cutting away half his tounge and rebuilding it by removing muscle mass from his left arm. I hear it will take about 12 hours, including the reconstruction. Afterward, it seems a couple of months of rehabilitation awaits, as he will need to re-learn how to speak and eat.

Anyway, just asking for a few prayers and wishes for a speedy recovery. Thanks. 

_update 1/25/07:_
He's made it through surgery okay. It actually took closer to 14 hours and they kept him sedated for most of the day after. They successfully removed the cancer from the tounge. Still awaiting labs on the nodes they removed. He has a tube in his throat to help him breath. Will have that in for another two weeks. He hates the food tube they use to feed him. Not sure when they start speech therapy. Left arm is in a cast for about six weeks, he'll starts that part of his physical therapy after it comes off. He'll be in the hospital for another week and a half to two weeks, then the hard work begins.

_update 1/31/07_
He had to go under the knife again. Something wasn't right with the trac tube thing. It was bleeding, so they had to send him down to the OR again. They said it wasn't a big deal, but it sounds like he'll have to start over on waiting for his throat to heal.  On top of that they have him back in the 'Recovery Room', down from the 'Post Op' room and he doesn't like it at all. I think the pain med they give him are having bad reactions too. He's acting paranoid about everything. :sigh:

_update 2/2/07_
My father got moved back up the a 'post op' room today. I was able to speak to a social worker there, about my father, and she's giving me a VERY different story than the doctor and nurses were. I spoke to a doc and nurse in the recovery room and a different nurse from the post op room he was in previous to his second procedure, two days ago. All three said the trac thing was not that big a deal and they just needed to fix some bleeding. Today the social worker just told me that it WAS a big deal, that complications with the trac set him back and he may need to keep the trac in even when released, AND that my dad almost died that night. She said a lot of people were running in and out that night to fix the problem. She actually said this to my mother, but what the #$%^&*(??? Who am I suppose to believe and how do I get to the bottom of this?

_update 2/7/07_
Finally got the pathalogy report back for his lymph nodes and it's all negative, which is positive.  Sounds like he'll still have to go through radiation treatment though. Everything is still to be determined. He's up and able to take a few steps before he needs to sit again and at last check, they are able to cover up hi trac (with tape) and he's able to breath through his mouth and nose. Although they did have to hook him up to some oxygen after his short walk. Hopefully he gets his legs back fast, his house has stairs.  Prayers and wishes, keep em coming.  I hope the radiation treatment doesn't cause any set backs.

_update 2/20/07_
Dad should be out of the hospital tomorrow. He's doing much better. He can breath on his own, can cough up phlem (no need to stick a tube down his throat to do it). He can even talk a little now. He passed his swallow test, so he can drink stuff, but no food yet, unless it's pureed.  Looks like they will make him wait SIX whole weeks before they decide on radiation therapy though. :shrug: Thanks again for all the prayers and wishes guys! :thumbsup:


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## LifeNRA (Jan 24, 2007)

Prayers sent for your Dad.

I pray the surgery goes well and that he will make a speedy recovery.

:candle:


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## redskins38 (Jan 24, 2007)

Will be praying for your father and your family for sure as im sure some difficult times are ahead. Remember to trust God and know that he is in control. Praying for ya.


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## iNDiGLo (Jan 24, 2007)

Sending Prayers your way and with a strong support system he will be fine. :candle:


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## Beamhead (Jan 24, 2007)

Request granted. Keep the Faith.


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## MarNav1 (Jan 24, 2007)

We are with you. Keep your faith in the ALMIGHTY and you'll do well.
Remember, the test may be more for you than him.


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## d'mo (Jan 24, 2007)

Prayers on the way...


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## moeman (Jan 24, 2007)

Good Luck.
we are behind you


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## Erasmus (Jan 24, 2007)

Prayers sent. Take good care of your Daddy


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## amlim (Jan 24, 2007)

bro, a speedy and full recovery to your dad. i hope that you are in good health too.


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## blake711 (Jan 24, 2007)

1 Order of Prayers going up.. For your dad and everyone around him.

Blake


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## greenlight (Jan 24, 2007)

Ouch, that must hurt. I hope that's the end (of the surgery).


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## Sinjz (Jan 25, 2007)

Thanks for the prayers and wishes guys! :grouphug:

That should be it for the surgery, but depending on labs for his lymph nodes, radiation treatment may be neccessary.

Editted a quick update into the first post for anyone interested.

Thanks again guys.


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## TorchMan (Jan 26, 2007)

Prayers and best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery.


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## 2000xlt (Jan 26, 2007)

prayers incoming!! God Bless


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## greenLED (Jan 26, 2007)

:candle:
My best wishes for a swift recovery!
:grouphug:


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## Stingray (Jan 26, 2007)

Prayers sent for a speedy recovery ! 

My mother is about to have surgery in 2 weeks to remove a tumor on her lung, send us some prayers back.


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## jayflash (Jan 26, 2007)

Sinjz, Stingray and others facing big challenges; may your prayers be answered. Humans can be unbelievably strong and persevere over the nearly impossible. Still, our lives can change in an instant and it's often beyond our control. 

Prayers sent.


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## PhotonWrangler (Jan 26, 2007)

Positive, healing thoughts being sent your way for your father... :grouphug:


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## rcashel11 (Jan 26, 2007)

I wish your father a speedy recovery. All the best to your family.


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## amlim (Jan 27, 2007)

great to hear the latest update. a speedy recovery to him.


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## DoubleDutch (Jan 28, 2007)

Sinjz,

I wish your father al the best. Support from his loved ones is vital too. I work in a hospital and have treated many patients with these kinds of operations. The swallowing function is vital; hope he will recover enough so he can eat normally again. They will probably leave the feeding tube and the tracheostomy in when starting swallowing recovery, just to make sure. When this goes well, and his breathing is not compromised, they can be taken out. Hope his speech recovery goes well also.

I wish you all the strength and optimism you can find from whichever source.

Kees


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## Sinjz (Feb 2, 2007)

Thanks again guys!

Another minor update in the first post.

Prayers for Stingray's mom and anybody else having to deal with this stuff. :sigh:

DoubleDutch, you seem to know what you're talking about. Is this parnoid thing common? He seems to thinks the nurses are out to get him and he's constantly making unreasonable request; Things I can't do for him and it's really draining me.


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## Oddjob (Feb 2, 2007)

My prayers to Sinjz and Stingray.

Sinjz,
I am an RN currently working in the OR but I have worked in the ICU and surgical post op units. Hospitalization can have a profound effect on an individual. Like DoubleDutch said family support is very important. Medications can have varying effects but being in the hospital environment 24/7 can also have an equally negative effect. I have seem some patients be very confused after surgery and during their recovery but eventually return to their normal personality. Good nursing is critical to any patient's recovery. What I have done in the past is arrange regular family meetings where everyone involved can discuss what is going on. It is important to have Doctors, Nurses, Speech pathologist etc on the same page working towards the same goals especially if your father has a long recovery ahead of him. Again, all my prayers to you and your family.


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## savumaki (Feb 2, 2007)

Ken
That makes the staples in my leg (from knee replacement) seem rather insignificant !!

My prayers for your Dad.

Karl


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## Pax et Lux (Feb 2, 2007)

When my newborn daughter was critically ill, I put the word out to ask for prayers - and got people of all faiths doing it for me.

It helped, thinking of all people with slightly different views of the ultimate taking time out from their lives. She's fine now - even if it was the doctors that saved her life, I felt stronger at the time, knowing other people cared.

I just spent a quiet moment, thinking of you, in my own way.


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## greenLED (Feb 2, 2007)

:candle: :grouphug:


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## Illum (Feb 2, 2007)

Request granted. Best of luck:candle:
 I still remember when gramps went under the knife couple years ago :mecry:

Ill shine lights into the sky tonight for your dad


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## UKSFighter (Feb 2, 2007)

Prayers and well wishes incoming. Take good care of him.


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## MikeSalt (Feb 2, 2007)

Prayers for your dad. Glad to hear that he got through the main surgery though.


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## Sinjz (Feb 3, 2007)

My father got moved back up the a 'post op' room today. I was able to speak to a social worker there, about my father, and she's giving me a VERY different story than the doctor and nurses were. I spoke to a doc and nurse in the recovery room and a different nurse from the post op room he was in previous to his second procedure, two days ago. All three said the trac thing was not that big a deal and they just needed to fix some bleeding. Today the social worker just told me that it WAS a big deal, that complications with the trac set him back and he may need to keep the trac in even when released, AND that my dad almost died that night. She said a lot of people were running in and out that night to fix the problem. She actually said this to my mother, but what the #$%^&*(??? Who am I suppose to believe and how do I get to the bottom of this?


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## Pydpiper (Feb 3, 2007)

Ken, I hope this all works out for all of you. I wish I had something profound to say or offer, stick with pursuing the truth my friend, there will come a time when you will be glad you did.
Chin up.


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## DoubleDutch (Feb 10, 2007)

Sinjz,

Sorry, took me a while to look up this thread again...hadn't found your updates in your first post.

As for the paranoia, I think Oddjob put it well: a few days in Intensive Care can have a spectacular effect on someone's mind, and (mild) paranoia and delusions are quite common. It is usually temporary. Is this still a problem? I don't know your father's age, but if he had only the slightest beginnings of dementia pre-op, the effects may have been more severe. Hope he has recovered from this. If it is a real problem, I surely hope the nurses and/or doctors will have taken action. A very mild dose of antipsychotic medication will often help. But by the sound of it, your father is past this stage; the first few days are mostly the worse.

As for the bleeding: he may have had a vein or even artery that was afflicted either by the surgery, or by the trach. It can take a while to start leaking. Internal bleeding can put recovery back severely in that it can create tissue damage and even a fistula. And since it is in or near his airway, there is usually a greater risk, and it needs immediate action. I think that, after a crisis like that, and all has gone well, you may find that most hospital personell (especially docters) will have the tendency to play down what happened, so as not to scare the patient or family in hindsight. I think this is understandable, but questionable. A social worker looks at this from a very different angle and possibly does not have all the information. If the doctor has said it was a close shave to the social worker, and says different to you, that's not good. But the fact that people were running about does not necessarily mean that his life was acutely at risk, either. 

I share Oddjobs view on this: a family meeting with (at least) the doctor (specialist who performed the surgery), nurse and social worker in which all your questions and fears must be adressed. Ask the nurse to set it up. It is important that you utter your feelings of disbelief as a result of the different kinds of information you received. My feeling is that there are different perceptions of how great the danger was, and different views on what should be told (see above). If you want to go further, your father is always entiteled to look into or have copies of his medical file. If he should do this, I think he will mostly find a very neutral description of events, hopefully complete and accurate, with no direct indication of what _might_ have happened. But it can serve as a subject for an evaluation. But I suggest you do this towards the end of treatment, or when these things still bother you after, say, six weeks.

Good news about the lymph nodes, though. And it seems that the swelling has gone down far enough for him to use the original airway. He can get rid of the tube if the swallowing function allows it. If the problems with this are still severe, and he should swallow the wrong way regularly, pneumonia is a big risk. For his longues to be kept clean, he will then be better off _with _the tracheostomy, for as long as is necessary. With the extra surgery (and sedation), he will in any case have some more work to do on his general recovery.

As for the future: your father will in the near future still have some swallowing problems. My guess is that the radiotherapy will start within two or three weeks after he is dismissed from hospital. The thing is, radiation will certainly make swallowing more difficult, because the mucous membrane and salivary glands will take a beating. And during the five to seven weeks the radiation will take, he will need all the nutrition he can get, because it can be very exhausting (differs from person to person), and all the affected tissues need nutrition. So it may be advisable to leave in the feeding tube for that time (and till some weeks after radiation has stopped) to guarantee his intake. Sometimes they will give someone a feeding tube that goes directly into the stomach through the abdominal wall, if the swallowing problems will be severe enough or last longer. You could adress this question. Probably the best person to answer this, apart from the nurse and doctor, is the speech-trainer and/or dietician.

I hope it all works out well for you all!
My thoughts are with you.

Kees


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## Sinjz (Feb 20, 2007)

Sorry for the late reply. been swaped and haven't been around much. Didn't see this get bumped, so didn't know it got a reply even when I did swing by.

I've come to the conclusion that I will never know the real truth; It's probably somewhere between both stories. The Docs and nurses seem to downplay everything and this social worker seems to be very quick with the bad news, like how she already knew that my dad needs radiation therapy because she saw it on the sheet, eventhough the docs are making my father wait six more weeks before they tell us what they decide. :shrug:

Yes dad, was loopy after both surgeries. It also coincided with any change, like moving from post-op to the ICU. He doesn't even remember some of my visits or some of the stuff he made me do.... :sigh: He was much better 'mentally' a couple of days later.

Update in first post. 

BTW, they busted out all his teeth. They took out the bottom half for the surgery, but why take the top half out, last week?


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## DoubleDutch (Feb 20, 2007)

Sinjz,

They may have taken the rest of his teeth out as a preparation for the radiation treatment. If any teeth should not be in good condition, they will undoubtedly develop problems during radiation. Taking them out would probably mean they are planning to go through with it.

Good to hear he can go home. A bit strange they can't decide on the radiation, though. Keep up your spirits.

Kees


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