Post surgery: Day 4

Sid has been recovering so well! His doctor is so pleased with his progress. For the most part the pain has been very controlled with only a few rough goes.

At this point we are all just waiting for his intestines to finish waking up so that they can remove the NG tube that's removing his stomach acid and one of the chest tubes that's draining excess fluids from the surgery site internally.

Each day he is getting more mobile and stronger. Hopefully tomorrow those tubes will be removed!

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Miraculous

After a miraculous stay at the hospital, Sid was discharged on Thursday - exactly one week from his surgery. I use "miraculous" very intentionally. There isn't a logical reason for Sid to be healing so well. We were told his stay would most likely be 10-14 days. I should make mention that the obvious blessings apparent in this journey do not (and have not) always help us avoid difficulties. The first night home was incredibly hard. The instant shift from having a professional nurse monitoring all of Sid's meds, food, wound care, etc to us taking on all of that responsibility, was... overwhelming. Every department sends you home with a literal packet of info to read and there are some discrepancies on how to handle certain care. I consider myself a very capable person and I also have a decent background in medical care between my days as an EMT and my college job at the plasma center. It was still a lot to have thrust on us all at once. But with some good planning and...

Consultations

In the last couple of weeks there have been many consultations with new doctors that are being added to Sid's medical team. They have all been so kind and professional. They have taken great effort to care for Sid; emotionally, physically, intellectually - they have gone to great lengths to make sure we are ready for the fight ahead. Because of Sid's initial Stage 4 diagnosis, surgery wasn't ever supposed to be on the table. But due to a combination of a few factors (I'm not sure I could do it justice here) they proposed trying it with this current tumor. However, the medical team is a little hesitant to just jump right into surgery. The hesitation is that if there are any lingering cancer cells floating around in the body that are not currently detected on scans, they would be doing Sid a HUGE disservice by doing surgery. If the surgery was done and the cancer were to pop up elsewhere, we wouldn't be able to jump back into chemo until Sid was fully recovered fro...

A Walking Miracle

Today we finally moved out of limbo and have a plan of action! We met with Dr. Contreras again this morning who is a thoracic surgeon at Huntsman. We really like him as a person and as a professional. We've collectively made the decision to move forward with Sid getting the surgery done. If you're curious the procedure is specifically called an Ivor Lewis Esophagectomy. This will happen on June 5th. We were told that Sid is likely less than 1 or 2 percent of patients who have started with metastatic disease with response to treatment and now being treated as if it were a localized cancer. Sid responded that he fully attributes this to Divine intervention as a result of the many prayers said on his and our behalf. Dr. Contreras completely agreed. Truly a walking miracle. Generally, this surgery entails removing the lower third (more or less) of his esophagus, upper section of the stomach (which will permanently reshape the stomach into a tube shape), and the surrounding lymph...

The business and blessings of our Beckstead family.

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