Jan. 9: We just got done meeting with Dr. Farnell. I’m doing this update from Mayo’s swanky, stylish waiting room. Her surgery is tentatively scheduled for 6:45 am on Wednesday morning. She’s supposed to report in at 5:30 am (which, for Mom, is really early). Good thing our hotel is across the street.
Dr. Farnell said he expected the surgery will last six to seven hours, but it depends a lot on the complexity. He stressed several times that it isn’t yet clear that he’ll be able to do the entire surgery. They’ll start with a laproscopy, move on to a physical and then visual examination of the site of the tumor, and then if it still looks do-able, they’ll begin the Whipple.
Dr. Farnell said the average hospital stay is 10 days. He quoted risk to life at about 1% and risk of complication at about 40%. However, Mom told him that she doesn’t plan on doing complications, so that should make things much simpler. Risks during the surgery are related to blood loss. For 24 hours post-surgery, risks are bleeding and potential clotting of the Superior Mesenteric Vein. Then for about one week, there’s a risk of the new seams between the pancreas and the intestine leaking. Fortunately, most of those complications they can address without needing to do further surgery.
If they do the full surgery, they said that most patients (90%) do not need to be in the ICU. The average hosptial stay is 10 days, and they said they will try to get her up and moving the day after surgery.
Dr. Farnell has emphasized the complexity and number of uncertenties of this surgery. He said he can’t guarantee that he can do the surgery, but he said that he’d like to give it a shot. He also stressed that it isn’t clear that this is cancer. That’s what Mom is aiming for! We should know about 24 hours after the full surgery if it is.
So now we go and Mom gets her blood drawn and takes care of some paperwork, and the rest of our gang should arrive this evening. So far, thumbs up!