I am home. I got here yesterday, just before dinnertime.

It has been a tough road. Had everything gone smoothly I would have been home four days earlier, but alas, it did not work out that way. As everything in life, this too has passed and here I am.

That said, I was on the phone with my surgeon at 2 AM discussing if I need to ambulance back. We decided to wait it out under certain parameters; today is going well.

Yes, I have a lot of posts to write from my notes and they will soon come fast and furious. I will give you the thirty second summary here:

• Surgery went two hours longer than predicted, but went well.
• Radiation did a heck of a job on my tissues, hence the added two hours.
• Good thing I was awake and questioning the first hour I was in a room. “No, I don’t take Lopressor, I have no idea what it is, and I am refusing the medication.” Ooops, a medication error. I guess they do really happen.
• A day of really nasty retching ended with three attempts at an NG tube, some relief …
• Only to discover a blockage elsewhere to be resolved.

I could go on, and will. I’ll discuss those items and more in the next few days as well as living with a temporary ostemy bag. There is one thing I do want to say clearly though…

There is an incredible staff on that surgical floor. The doctors, nurses, assistants, the entire team is top notch. I have spent 25 years with both my severely disabled kids in and out of a total of four hospitals. I have had personal interactions in the handful I and those close to me have been in over the years. I have worked in emergency rooms, etc. This staff was (is) top-notch and does show some of the advantages of a big city, Ivy League medical teaching hospital.

So you will be reading about the good, bad, and ugly. And I do not have pathology reports yet, so don’t know the odds of my cancerfreeness.