Surgery Update

The day is bittersweet - we heard news this morning that a family friend's 21 year old son passed away last night after a long and tough fight with cancer. Times like these make you really question how something like this could happen to such an amazing person with so much life and love to still give - all we can do is trust our faith I guess and hope God has a bigger and better plan in mind. Many thoughts and prayers today.

Re: Dad, thankfully all good news so far. The actual surgery ended up beginning at 8:45am this morning. Dad was really fortunate because they used a special "MRI room" to operate, allowing the surgeon to complete an MRI test during surgery. With this capability, the surgeon has been able to see mid-surgery whether or not he was able to resect all of the tumor or if he needs to continue operating. We've received a few updates over the past couple of hours, letting us know Dad is stable and things are going well. We just received another call saying the surgeon had finished removing the tumor and they are going to proceed with "closing 'em up" (yikes! :)). She said Dad is stable and things are going well (yes!!!!!). It sounds like it will be another hour to an hour and a half before the entire surgery is complete. Following, the surgeon will come talk to us personally. I will give another update after we talk with the surgeon, but things are going well so far!!!

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Another small update, we just spoke with the surgeon - they did not wake him up yet, but surgery is complete and overall went well. The surgeon said he was able to resect all visible signs of the tumor! This being said, there are always additional cancer cells "floating" around the areas where the tumors were, so radiation will be a necessity but the surgery today was a big and really positive step forward!! We can't get our hopes up quite yet because Dad still needs to wake up and needs to be assessed etc, but very happy the surgery went so well. More updates soon!

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We were just able to see Dad! He is really tired, but otherwise doing great! Once again, he is able to remember everything and is able to move both hands and feet - such a blessing and relief. They have moved him out of recovery and into the Neuro ICU, where he will stay tonight. He's not out of the woods yet - they haven't had him stand at all yet and swelling/bleeding will still be a risk in these first couple of days, but he's doing great! Thanks again soo much for all of the prayers and positive thoughts - they are clearly working and we are so thankful!

Photos to come, but we'll let him take a nap first :-)