Home Sweet Home

I got home from the hospital on Saturday August 15th, one week after the procedure. Although this was suppose to be a minimally evasive procedure we had some hiccups along the way. The typical stay the doctors said was 2-4 days depending on how the incision site drained. So, worst case scenario we should have been out of there by Wednesday. Wednesday rolled around and the drain had lost suction and wasn't producing anything so instead of believing that the incision site was clear they elected to hook me up to wall suction. It is our opinion that with this wall suction, which was stronger than the manual drain suction the drain itself likely attached to a blood vessel and irritated it. Wednesday afternoon the drain site began to bleed but not into the drain but out the side of my chest, the doctors and nurses elected to watch it til Thursday morning, where at which time they made the decision to pull the drain. Upon removing the drain from my neck the incision site continued to bleed, a lot. Later in the afternoon the doctors attempted to stop the bleeding by using a surgical application called surgicell which was to clot the site. Instead of bleeding out of the wound I continued to bleed which ballooned my neck into a Hematoma, my neck swelled up considerably and it was difficult to move. Thursday night the on-call doctor visited my room and opened up the hole which was closed earlier in the day to allow all of the fluids to come out and remove the pressure on my neck, to do this he had to make the hole larger in my neck.



Because of this I have to have the dressing on the wound changed twice a day, once by a visiting nurse and the other time Jamie dons her nurses outfit and does it. It is somewhat like playing the game operation for she has to swab the hole in my chest and then pack it with a gauze strip to collect any fluids draining, I am lucky that Jamie has a strong stomach and can manage doing this without feeling sick. If the roles were reversed I might feel a bit queezy.



A crazy ordeal but at least we are through it.

We finally got the pathology on the lymph nodes which were removed and they all came back negative, meaning no cancer which is a relief.

Left Neck Lymph Node Dissection

Well, the procedure went well on Saturday August 8th. We are just now waiting for the incision site to stop draining. I currently have a drain sticking out of my neck. Once the draining slows down I should be discharged. The neck was sore for the first couple of days but has been feeling pretty good. The healing process has been slowed a bit because when they get to the lymph nodes they do have to cut through tendons and this can produce "kile" in the area vacated by the lymph nodes. To alleviate this the doctor has put me on a low fat diet with no meats allowed. I've cut some weight since being here. Just wanted to give a quick post as to where things are at, Jamie and I are optimistic I will get discharged tomorrow or Thursday.