From John - Follow up with Chang

I've missed Dr. Chang's early morning daily visits. He walked in, briskly disposed of the niceties, and with hardly a fair thee well, slipped on some gloves and started to give me pain. He took off the tape over my last remaining drainage tube (the tape over the recently re-grown belly hair) cut the sutures holding the tube in, and pulled the thing out. My eyes were looking anywhere but at the deed, but my posse says it was pretty neat - it just kept on coming for more length than anyone anticipated. Then he moved on to the staples. I thanked him because it looks like it was sewn up a little unevenly and it appears as though he were trying to do something for my persistent slice (a golf malady). Those came out with not too much pain, he said that I could certainly take a shower, just give the drainage hole a day or two to close up and pat dry the area of the feeding tube when done. Yahoo.

Then we talked about the pathology report on the removed parts. There is plenty of clean margins on the stuff, lots of room between the spot and the edges. He says that's good, real good. They did find cancer cells on 2 of the 12 lymph nodes removed. That still sounds awful to me, but Chang says that everything is packed so close in there that they often find more than that ratio in that area and it isn't a big problem - they'd be administering chemo if they had found 0 out of 12. So, I'm scheduled to meet with the new Doctor in Charge, Chemo Kaufman, on the 17th.

The deal is to continue to gain weight and strength, take lots of naps, little walks, showers, read, and relax. I think I'll go get a snack and a nap.

John