Pathologist: "It's cancer."
[Dissolve to...]
Pathologist: "Sorry, I was smoking crack, is isn't cancer."
[Cut to title with voiceover]
Announcer: "Who cares what the hell it is?"
It's
Frank's Thoracoscopy!
Check it out on video (it's in four parts, this is part one of four). No, it's not my actual surgery, but a close facsimile thereof. Although not for the squeamish, I happen to find it very cool.
Anyhoo, yesterday was the follow-up with the thoracic surgeon. Very uneventful, although after looking at the chest x-ray that was taken right before my appointment, that chunk of lung he took out seemed a lot larger than I had previously visualized (even though it was probably only about 2% of my total lung tissue).
A nurse took my BP and said, "119 over 72. That's awesome!" I smiled smugly at The Rev., who proceeded to roll her eyes so far back into her head that I did in fact see her optic nerves.
Awesome? Well, yes, but I already knew that.
Oh, in answer to the question I had the other day, the doc said they got the chunk out by deploying some sort of bag with a drawstring around the specimen, then cinching it tight before taking it out through the thorascopy port. (They had deflated my lung in order to operate on it, using a breathing tube and a ventilator to keep my right lung working. The lung tissue folds easily when deflated.)
Part four of the video shows how this happens. The diseased area is isolated with staples and removed from the rest of the lung, then placed in a bag to avoid contamination of other areas of the chest cavity. Cool!
At the end of the day, I was sent home and told the surgeon didn't need to see me again. I felt like I had been spurned following a one-night stand. It was the same story I had heard from my urologist as well as the surgeon who did the RPLND. Why are these surgeons so afraid of commitment?
Back to surveillance!
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