March 29, 2006 - Update #5- 8:10 PM

We have been busy this past hour and a half after day of waiting. Dr. Lawrence called at 5:10 to say they were closing and then eventually at 5:45 we heard that we should head to the family lounge in PICU where they would meet us. Around 6:30 we saw Leah and her entourage going down the hall to her room and Dr. Lawrence was just minutes behind to talk with us.

Overall he felt the surgery went well and that the results were positive. This sounds like great, great news to us. (The oncologists will still not show much optimism, we know, because even one microscopic cancer cell the surgeons cannot see could exist, but we have overcome one hurdle today). The entire right lobe of her liver was removed leaving the left lobe alone. Unlike her biopsy when they were unable to tell normal liver from tumor he said it was easily discernible where the tumor was. It was not encased in the liver, but rather was growing out from the liver. She also did not need blood during surgery, although there is some debat whether she will get some now to "catch up" because she did lose some blood. The lung portion of the surgery was very fast. In the lower lobe they thought they felt a nodule and removed it but it was quite small. They also removed the area where the other suspicious nodule was at one point, but did not see anything there. Everything will go to pathology anyway to get the final result. Chris and I have been in to see Leah and she was even awake enough to nod when I asked if she was owie. They have been monitoring her pain very carefully and given her some morphine to help with this. She does seem to know that we are there and the one resident was rather surprised that she was as awake as she was. Since then she has drifted off to sleep. They are also working on pulling her one tube out a bit since the routine chest x-ray showed it to be a bit deep and not providing the best ventilation. They may remove her ventilator yet tonight. There are people working on her/around her fairly constantly. No one seems to think there are concerns right now and she appears to be doing well. We hope the good news continues and thank you for the many prayers. Please keep praying as these next few days/weeks will be exhausting for us all.