Day Ten

Before I begin, I have had a request to post the name of Rob's cancer. The name is Adenocarcinoma. His stage is IB (so much better than stage IV or terminal!!!).

Good Morning! This is such a fun roller coaster! Up and down, up and down! Today, my emotions are up. Rob is in little pain and his nausea is close to nothing. YAY!!!

This morning, I stopped in to see Rob before I came into work. Dr. Danielle Adams (the surgical resident) said that Rob is looking well. Every time his doctors see him, they ask him to couch. They look at his chest tube container and watch for the bubbles to form during the cough. The more bubbles, the greater the leak; fewer is better.

This is the chest tube container.


Another view.

There are a few things that are going to happen today: they are going to unhook the vacuum again this morning and later today, Rob will receive an x-ray to see how his pneumothorax is healing.

If it is getting better, then they will remove the chest tubes out tomorrow and he will go home Saturday after making sure the dosage of his oral meds is correct.

If it does not get better, then they will send him home with a cute little portable drainage thingy that we will need to empty three times a day. If he does go home with that, then we will go to see Dr. Collins (surgeon) about a week later. I was worried that we would have to go to Collins' office everyday, so that is a relief.


This is the cute little drainage thingy...

We will not know anything until later this evening. I will update as soon as I know anything!