Today was the last of the doctor appointments that I have until the surgery, and it was nice to get it out of the way. It was supposed to be an hour and a half, and took just over 2 hours, so not too bad all-in-all.
Today I learned what I need to do before the surgery, what wonderful tubes I will have put into my body, and the basic recovery time for the process. As of now they think I will be in the hospital 2-3 days. When I come home I will not be able to drive for 2-4 weeks, all depending on how long I am taking the pain meds. But she did say I could get back in the pulpit in a couple of weeks, as long as someone drives me to the church.
The procedure that they hope to do is a "thoracoscopy," which is the one where they insert a camera into three small incisions. They will then remove the right upper lobe from there. If they cannot get everything that way they will do a "thoracotomy," which is a larger, vertical incision under the arm pit and remove everything from there. Time in the hospital is about the same for both. It will all depend on when they can get the chest tube out of me.
I am glad to be done with all the appointments that were scheduled. It has been a lot of trips to doctors and procedures in a short time, considering this started on March 1. The next two and a half weeks will be a welcome break from the medical arena.
As I mentioned before, surgery is scheduled for April 15th. I will continue to do semi-regular updates on here until then and after as well. They did say that all the rooms were private and they have Wi-Fi, so I will be blessed to have the computer with me during my time up there.
Have a blessed Holy Week. I am sure I will have at least one more post up before Easter.
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