Great news!

The surgery went great! Sorry for the late post, I'm sure people have been wondering what was going on! The surgeon was running behind this morning, but luckily I got to sit back with burns in the pre op till he was wheeled back. They started at 2 and then the surgeon came out and talked to us around 4:15 or 4:30. She said he did remarkably. She made one incision in an effort to attempt to do it laparoscopically, but quickly changed her mind when she realized the size and density of his spleen. The incision ended up having to be about an inch longer than anticipated, due to the size. She told us that it the hardest part removing it was not so much the mass, but the fact that the back of it was stuck to tissue and she had to take her hands and de-attach it. After the spleen was removed she said it was five times the normal size. A regular spleen can fit into the palm of your hand, and she said his was the size of a football!! We were so surprised when she told us that she ended up not having to give him any platelets! She said that even though he only had a few, the ones he had were great 'workers.' He is obviously going to be in lots of pain the next few days, but thank god he will have a morphine pump! Since he did so well he won't have to stay in the icu tonight, but the regular surgical unit, which is great because the icu has crazy visiting hours! They seemed very encouraged that he will be able to go to the bone marrow unit tomorrow night! Dr Chao told us this week that his counts should improve rather quickly after the surgery, and we just heard from Dr Buckely that his white count is already 2.0!!! It was 0.5 before surgery!!!

So all in all it went about as perfect as it could have gone! We loved both the anesthesiologist and the doctor; and burns could not have done any better through surgery (but I'm sure no one is surprised by that!). God answered one prayer getting him through surgery safely, so now we just have to get his counts up and get us back to Greensboro!

Thanks for everything!