surgery is over

BREATH! Surgery is over!

At 12:40PM the pager went off, the nurse notified us that surgery is over and the doctor will meet us in consultation room B. The doctor did not keep us waiting long, he joined us in the small consultation room within 15 minutes of the call. Dr Daneker entered the room, he was holding a small wooden box in his hands...I think Julie and I were both thinking that small wooden box held our mom's pancreas. Dr Daneker slowly removed his eye glasses from his face and said that our mom was fine and the surgery went well. Then he opened the box and put his eye glasses safely in the box...I guess we don't get to keep any favors from the surgery.

As most of you are aware, my mom was diagnosed with IPMN (Intraductual Papillary Mucinous Neoplasm). This is a type of non-invasive cancer that could progress to invasive cancer if left untreated. The doctor recommended the Whipple procedure because there was an opportunity to treat the pancreatic tumors before developing into an aggressive, hard-to-treat cancer.

Dr Daneker said that he ended up taking 60% of the pancreas...a little more than they initially planned to take because there was a tumor mid-pancreas. Dr Daneker reconstructed mom's digestive tract...during the procedure he removed the gall bladder, 60% of her pancreas, a portion of the stomach, small intestines and bile duct. He confirmed they removed all tumors associated with the cyst. The doctor said they know that non-invasive cancer was present but will not know if there is any invasive cancer until results come back from pathology. We should get these results by end of week. The doctor said it is probable my mom will be insulin dependent post this surgery but will not conclude until further evaluation during her recovery.

Mom was in recovery for 2.5 hours before moving to ICU.