More surgery this week

We're happy to report that my whole lung radiation treatment went very smoothly. I had a little irritation of my esophagus (i.e., some discomfort with swallowing), but that was all. Overall, I've been feeling much, much stronger over the last several weeks. At the end of chemotherapy in June, I had about 20 pounds of extra water-weight (edema); fortunately, that's gone now!

We finished on August 14th and then went on vacation for ten days in Canada. Gwyneth's family's cottage is right on the Ottawa River, so William had a terrific time playing in on the beach (nearly all day long...)
and we actually got him to ride in the canoe.

More photos are here.

A couple of days after we came home, I had another followup chest CT. Thankfully, this was quite good - my only visible disease was one, one-centimeter nodule in my left lung. As this is the only cancer that we can see, it's possible that I'll benefit from having it surgically removed. So, we saw my thoracic surgeon in Boston last week (the same one who did my right lung biopsies in February) and are scheduled for another surgery on Wednesday, September 9th.

This will be a video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (i.e., a "VATS" procedure). This is very similar to laparoscopic surgery - except that it will be in my chest instead of abdomen; I'll have three small incisions between my ribs where the instruments and camera will be inserted. In February, I was out of the hospital after just one night and had a very easy recovery. We'll hope for the same this time!

We were planning on travelling to Houston to see my parents this week, which obviously has been preempted. However, thanks to the flexibility of Southwest Airlines and the generosity of the Helm family, my parents will be flying up to Boston on Tuesday and we're all going to spend the week at the Helm's vacation house on Cape Cod. With current highs in the 90's in Houston and the 70's on Cape Cod, this may not be such a bad trade (despite the three new chest wounds that I'll be getting...). Yes, we'll beware of the sharks.

Bottom line, this surgery is good news (i.e., we wouldn't be doing this if I'd not had a good response to my recent chemotherapy and radiation). As always, we very much appreciate your prayers and support!

Robert and Gwyneth