Surgery

Brynlee had her surgery this morning to place her Broviac line and to get a biopsy of the tumor and a bone marrow aspirate. Overall, everything went well. It took much longer than they originally had planned, but they were able to get it done.

 

Dr. Scaife did the surgery for the biopsy and line placement, and he is the surgeon who placed her line and did the biopsy the first time. I like Dr. Scaife, and I am glad that he did the surgery again. He was optimistic that he would be able to get a biopsy with just the scope, and he did. He said it was very straightforward and he was able to use the same incision sites that he used before and that there was very little scar tissue from the first time. After Dr. Scaife was done then it was Dr. Fluchel's turn to get the bone marrow aspirate. It was over 2 hours after I talked to Dr. Scaife after he had finished with his part until I got to see Brynlee, which seemed a little bit too long to me, but apparently she was a sleepy girl.

 

We got admitted up to the 3rd floor ICS unit as the 4th floor was full, and we have been resting since then and watching TV. They left a chest tube in for drainage, which hopefully can come out tomorrow, and then she has a Power Broviac that you can seen in the picture, which looks a little bit different than her last one.

Unfortunately, the special surgery techs or nurses or whoever it was that put the dressing on the Broviac line completely missed covering the actual insertion site with the dressing, so poor Brynlee had to endure a dressing change this afternoon. She was not happy about it, and I'm not happy with the way they dressed it up here in the ICS either, but I guess I will have to get something worked out with Home Health because I can already tell that this dressing is not going to last a week. 

Brynlee doesn't seem to be in too much pain at this point, and she has been very snuggly and quiet. She is taking a nap right now as I type. 

They were going to start her chemo today but decided to give her body some rest and start the chemo tomorrow, so we will be in the hospital until at least Saturday if everything goes well. Dayna, our beloved nurse practitioner, who is absolutely the best and holds a special place in my heart, has been taking good care of us. She said that the two chemo drugs that Brynlee will be receiving are usually tolerated pretty well, so we can only hope that Brynlee does as well this time as she did the first time we went through this.