Woo Hoo!

Lots to be thankful for today. Just got the final path report and all is good! Hal went back for his check-up yesterday and they released him to do whatever he feels like doing. He can drive, he can work and woo hoo he can take out the trash!! Hal has been amazing through this whole process. He has just toughed it out and dealt with the pain. He is happy to have it behind him and says its definitely something he never wants to do again.

Thanks for all the calls, food, visits and most of all the prayers that got us through this.

Good Night!

It was really good to be home last night. Hal did great. He slept (till I would wake him to take pain meds)good in his own bed. He has done really good this morning. He got up and showered and checked emails and talked with work for a while. He is managing the pain well.

Home

Well, if you had told me Tuesday morning we would be home tonight, I probably would have laughed. But, here we are at home. They took his pain pump away a little before noon and the pain got pretty intense pretty quick. They started him on oral pain meds and it helps a little but the pain is still pretty bad. It's just going to be that way for a few more days. The Dr. came in after lunch and took the chest tube out (yikes! that was not pleasant at all) and told him he could go home if he wanted to. Said he would probably rest better at home in his own bed. So we left the hospital about 5:30, stopped of to get his pain pills (it was time for some) and got home and got him settled in his own bed. The next couple of days are probably gonna be a little tough, but he will be fine (easy for me to say, my chest wasn't cracked open!)

Thanks for all the prayers, call and good wishes. We should hopefully know in the next couple of days what the mass was.

Hal

Hal had a pretty good night. He pretty much feels like he has been hit by a mack truck this morning. He is just really sore, which is to be expected. The dr. said he would be by this morning to remove the chest tube and is still talking like we may be able to go home this evening. Hal is not convinced that going home will happen - I think the thought of going home without his pain pump just makes him a little nervous. I have assured him that they wont send us home without good drugs for the pain.

hal

Hal is out of surgery and in recovery. They were able to get all the tumor. They are still unsure as to what the tumor is - they are going to send it off - will be at least 48 hours before we have any results. The Dr. was glad he made the decision to go ahead and remove it. Hal did great and will go to a room after lunch and maybe home tomorrow.

Hal

Well, let me just start at the beginning, a couple of weeks ago Hal called me from work on a Tuesday morning and said he didn't feel right - said he felt a little light headed and just felt weird. He continued to feel worse as the day went on and by the time he came home from work was having hard chills and was running fever - I gave him some ibuprofen and he went to bed - I went on to volleyball practice - I talked to him a little while later and he said he was feeling a little better but his chest was hurting a little - he called me about an hour later having extremely severe chest pains - I got home and gave him a nitro and the pain eased up a bit - we thought he was having a heart attack. We headed to St. Bernards to the ER - Dr. Hill met us there and even tho his EKG didn't look like he was having a heart attack - he felt like it probably was also so they took him to the cath lab and did a cath - the good news was his heart looked great - absolutely no blockage and clean around the stints he has. In trying to figure out where his pain was coming from they discovered a mass in his chest. The mass had nothing to do with the pain he was having - apparently the pain was caused from a virus that caused his stomach to paralyze and push everything up into his chest and esophagus (sp?) and cause spasms - the Drs. said it is nearly impossible to tell the difference in that pain and the pain caused by a heart attack. So, back to the mass - several doctors have looked at the x-rays and cat scans and have decided that while they feel fairly certain the mass is benign it does not need to remain in there. Dr. Stevenson will do surgery on April 1 to remove the mass. They will have to crack his chest similar to open heart surgery. He will spend three days in the hospital and will be off work for a couple of weeks. It won't be fun but the fact he is in such good shape and is young (well sorta lol) should make his recovery much quicker.

I will try and post after the surgery and let all know how it went.