out of surgery

We had a call time of 4:45am at UCLA for a 7:30am surgery today. This time we got to be in the brand new Ronald Reagan hospital that has been newly built since the last time we were here. Everything during the checkin process seemed to flow along fine. We escorted Mark up to the preparation area and sat with him while he got debriefed by about 6 nurses and 3 anesthesiologists about what to expect during the operation and answered any questions we had. Mark seemed to have quite the international team, everyone was quite nice and we met players in the surgery from Iran, China, Greece and more! They whisked him off on time around 7:30am to the operating room and he was in good spirits joking all morning as usual. The waiting area was beautiful and seemed quite high tech. They set us up with a restaurant style pager and we parked ourselves by a monitor where you could watch the progress of where patients were in surgery…big improvement from last time where they never told us anything! About an hour in, there was a loud announcement over the speakers that said “Code BLUE, Code BLUE, radiology intervention needed on the 2^nd floor.” It was quite unnerving and sounded alarming and we were questioning what code blue was, but agreed it didn’t sound good. The next thing I knew, some one was asking I come to the phone because the doctor wanted to talk to me! My heart raced as I went to the phone, but was relieved to find out it was just a coincidence that the two announcements happened at the same time. The doc on the other end of the line said that incision happened about a half hour before and everything was going along fine. Whew! I later found out that code blue is related to some sort of cardiac emergency..but fortunately it had nothing to do with Mark!! The next update I got was from Dr. Liau herself. Surgery finished about 1pm and she said it went well. Initial pathology did conclude that it again was a GBM, the tumor was about walnut sized and again had all the characteristics of a stage 4 tumor. She said they did wake him up mid surgery to assess function and he was able to move all of his extremities and talk. She said this tumor was invading on the motor sensory areas and she did have to be a bit more aggressive than last time since tumor growth would affect his motor skills anyway and it was better to resect. She said that she got 90-100% of the visible tumor, but it is likely that he will have deficit on his right side; however physical therapy can help regain much of it. Next step is to wait for final pathology results in about a week. After that it is typically at least 4 weeks before any chemo or radiation plans are made so the situation can be assessed. He will be having a MRI later this evening and will most likely be in the hospital 2-3 nights. He will again be eligible for the vaccine trial since there is new tumor. She mentioned that he may not be able to drive for about 3 months, but depending on how he feels he may be able to go short distances…but no freeways for awhile! Once we see how things go, regular physical therapy arrangements can be made either in hospital or somewhere closer to our home. For now, Mark is in the recovery room and we’ll be able to visit in about 2 more hours.