George has been on the accelerated recovery path. His surgeon brags that he had fewer complications with George's surgery than he has ever had with this type of surgery. He was moved out of ICU on Thurs. and into a regular room. He's done well there, though, his first night, he got into hot water with the nurses by getting out of bed and trying to take care of things himself, unplugging various things, taking out the battery of some monitor, etc. He got royally chewed out and given a bed alarm.
Sorry for the delay in posting, but we've been waiting for the swallow test. We were led to believe it would happen several days ago, only to have the doctor finally tell us it always happens 5 days following surgery. I guess this surgery is so infrequent, many of the nurses don't know the "usual" protocol. Anyway, they finally did the test today. The results were mostly good. The great news was there was no leakage in the new connection. The only concern was George seemed to aspirate some of the fluid into his lungs when he swallowed. This has meant he was delayed in being able to start a liquid diet today. The speech people want to do a test Monday to see what is causing the problem. Meanwhile, tonight, the surgeon let him take a few small sips of water, and he seemed to do OK. So what all this means, I really don't know, but the surgeon thinks he'll be fine. The pathology of the tissue that was removed, all came back cancer free.
He got rid of most of the multiple tubes he had coming out of him, so he's more mobile and able to get up and walk around.
I think he can handle visitors pretty well, so feel free to come by--just keep it fairly short. I think he is a little sick of me! He's in room 1266 in the East Pavilion at MoBap.
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