Closest, Without Going Over

Jim and I drove back to Palo Alto Wednesday afternoon. We met some friends for a leisurely dinner and then made our way to our hotel for the night. Yesterday, we met with a surgeon at Stanford to discuss my splenectomy. As with just about every medical professional I’ve encountered in recent months, his comment was that my spleen is “huge.” I told him that Jim and I have begun to jokingly refer to it as Jupiter, to which he responded, “That’s pretty close.”

After a discussion of the pros and cons of splenectomy, we turned to the most pressing matter. How soon can the surgery happen? The poor surgeon started talking about “sometime in early September,” at which point I just had to speak up. As you know, this process has already consumed most of our summer and I am not the most patient person in the world. I’m ready to have the splenectomy, heal up and move forward. I want to feel better, I want to get back to work sooner rather than later, and I want to gain some sense of normalcy and equilibrium again. September just wasn’t cutting it for me. I practically begged for something sooner. The surgeon seems like a nice guy. He heard me out and then excused himself to talk to his scheduler. 

Amazingly, only about three minutes passed before he came back in and told us someone had canceled for Monday afternoon. If that would work for us, he would send in the scheduler to get the process started. I jumped in the offer. In addition to my personal desire to move forward soon, setting a surgery date for next week meant that Jim will still be on summer break and not have to take days off to go back to Stanford with me. Most of the kids are also on an abbreviated summer schedule next week so ya being gone will not impact them as greatly either. 

The scheduler came in, placed us on the surgery schedule “waiting list,” and sent us off to meet with the anesthesia department for a pre-surgery exam followed by some lab work. 

We left yesterday knowing that I was on a waiting list for Monday. We were told told when it was fully approved, someone would call. About half an hour ago, I received a call confirming that the splenectomy will take place at Stanford on Monday at 4:00pm. 

At this point, we know that I’ll be in the hospital anywhere between two and four days. According to the surgeon, the sooner I’m able to tolerate the pain on pain pills instead of IV pain meds, the sooner he will release me to go home. From that point, due to the size of the incision, he estimates a period of six to eight weeks for full recovery and healing.

We’ve got to have some fun with this. We are going to have a pool to see who can guess how much this spleen will weigh when it’s removed. The hospital will weigh the spleen in grams, so you will need to make a guess in grams. The person who guesses closest (nearest tenth of a gram) but doesn’t go over the weight will win an exciting prize! If you’d like to play, simply submit your guess by replying to the text that you received with this link. 

Thoughts and prayers always welcome!