Today was the day my biological father underwent surgery to remove the tumor from his mouth and the lymph nodes from his neck. The 10-12 hour surgery stretched into a 16 1/2 hour surgery with an amazing outcome.
Going into this surgery we fully expected (as did the doctor) that my dad would loose a portion of his jaw, teeth, tongue and possibly worse. Call it luck, call it a miracle, call it an excellent surgeon... Call it whatever you want, but the outcome was nothing short of amazing (Even the doctor thinks so!). My dad is still ONE HUNDRED PERCENT WHOLE! His face doesn't look any different tonight than it did this morning when he went into surgery (Well.... Unless you count the swelling, bruising, writing and tubes...)!
Those of you who know my dad, know that the outcome of the surgery will make the healing process tolerable for him and will give him the will to continue living and fighting. I can't even imagine how he would have dealt with any other outcome.
He is resting comfortably in the ICU where he will stay for the next 3-5 days. After that he will be moved to a 'regular' room where he will spend another few days. The next step is to wait for the lab results from all of the tissues and lymph nodes that were removed and tested. The surgeon feels certain that he was able to get a 3/4 inch margin of clear tissue but he's not sure if there are minuscule fingers of cancer hiding in there. Please pray for cancer free test results!
It's been a long day, and I'm exhausted to say the least.... Good night!
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