The Big Day

Hello all,

Kim asked me to update the blog today to let everyone know how her surgery went. So, here goes...

We arrived at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore ~5 this morning (a huge thanks to Chris for driving us from D.C.). Kim was in pre-op until ~7:30, and was (for good reason) extremely nervous. Both of the primary surgeons and the assisting surgeon stopped by to talk with her, and her anesthesiologist did gave an excellent overview of how he would be monitoring and managing Kim throughout the surgery. Because Kim was pretty nervous, he gave her something to help take the edge off, and then they moved her into surgery. We were told to expect everything to wrap up around 4 or 5pm.

From there...

* We were told that the first incision was made at 9:20.

* At 11 the nurse checked it and said that Dr. T was progressing smoothly and that Kim was doing well.

* At 12:20 we were told that Dr. C was now in the OR handling his portion of the surgery, and that so far everything had gone well.

* At 2:20 we heard that Dr. C was still working and Dr. T was scrubbing back in.

* At 4 Dr. C came out and let us know that he was finished with his portion of the work, and that Dr. T was continuing. The procedure would likely take two more hours as they work on removing the tumor and closing. They said that Kim had a fairly small space to work in (anatomically), and while the tumor wasn't any larger than expected this lack of room would cause it to take a bit longer than expected. Also, the tumor was stuck to the facial nerve more than hoped and there will likely be some temporary facial paralysis. However, she was doing fine otherwise.

* At 6:30 Dr. T came out to let us know that they had finished the procedure. Kim was now awake and on her way to the ICU where we would eventually be able to see her. While he could not be sure, his feeling was that hearing was likely lost in the ear (this lack of optimism was later expressed by Dr. C as well).

* While we were waiting in the ICU, Dr. C and Dr. T came out to let us know that the facial weaknesses seemed to be fairly minimal. However, there was some (unusual) weakness in Kim's shoulder, and they took her for a cat scan to make sure that nothing was out of the ordinary. The doctors felt the cat scan looked good, and are assuming that the shoulder weakness is a temporary side-effect of the position her arm had been in for the duration of the surgery (possibly furthered by diabetes). They said that it seemed to be improving and that they would watch it over the coming days.

* We were able to see Kim at 8. She was in a bit of pain and was worried about the shoulder, but was half-awake and able to whisper.

That's where things were left. Overall, both surgeons seemed to feel fairly pleased with how things went. While hearing was likely lost, and there may be some temporary facial weakness, these were both things that we expected. I'll continue updates tomorrow as Kim makes the switch from the ICU to her room.

-pz