Day of Thomas's Surgery

This blog post is copy-and-pasted from our CaringBridge account (https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/thomaslauer) and published in retrospect.

All checked in then a 1-hour delay

 Waking up and getting out of the house and getting to the hospital went well other than Thomas getting car sick on the car ride.

When we got to the pre-op room as they were going through all the procedures, the surgical resident came in and paused everything.   There was another young boy who had an aspiration emergency and they needed to bump Thomas back an hour.

Ora Pro Nobis

At 8:24am they wheeled Thomas away from us to the operating room.   We beg Almighty God to look favorably down upon us looking not at our sins but to show His mercy on our family and may the Blessed Virgin envelop Thomas Vincent in the loving embrace of Heavenly grace and protection through her son Jesus Christ, Lord of Lords and King of Kings.  St. Joseph keep watch over our family as you have over your Holy Family.  St. Thomas, pray for us.  St. Philomena, pray for us.  St. Rita, pray for us.  St. Benedict, pray for us. St. Jude, pray for us.

Six and a half hours in surgery and still no update

We estimate that surgery began around 9:30a and roughly every hour we get a message from the hospitals' communications app that Thomas's surgery is still in progress.  Still no meaningful information from the doctors.  We are so grateful for all the prayers for our sweet Thomas.

Nine and half hours and still going

We continue to wait in prayerful anticipation.  A couple of hours ago we heard a slight update when the waiting room attendant talked to the nurse in the operating room.   The nurse could only say that Tom was doing great but she could not estimate how much longer it would be.  She said the surgery is very involved.  

We are so grateful for all the prayer and support.

30 more minutes

We just heard from the surgeon via text from nurse that they should be done in about 30 mins.

Praise God ... a successful surgery.

I will keep this short, as we have 20 minutes before being led back to ICU.

We were not at all anticipating that they could remove the whole tumor, but the surgeon did! The surgery lasted 12 hours instead of the estimated 4-6.

It was a "very difficult surgery". 

Thomas will be in ICU overnight and remain on a ventilator. We hear it is a large incision. He had transfusion of 400 cc blood, which is about 20% of his blood volume.

He will still have more chemo to kill any more cells.

We are exhausted and it was only thousands of rosaries and so many sacrifices today that held us up when we could not stand on our own.

Update

Doctor said he got 99%+ of the tumor ... which means "gross total resection."

This was far beyond what was thought possible as an outcome.  We were told to hope for 90% resection.

This is such a blessing.