Surgery Update
Today, we are praising God for His healing power, His creative design of our physical bodies, His compassion toward us, His divine sovereignty, His perfect timing, His grace and mercy; we are also praising the Lord for the prayers of so many wonderful family & friends, and for amazing doctors & nurses. We are ALL in HIS loving hands.
Wednesday, August 6, 2025. Bryan’s surgery day at Mayo Clinic, to remove the metastases remaining on his liver and right lung, had finally arrived. We have been anticipating this day for over a month now. Bryan has gone through endless scans and tests and evaluations over the last several weeks in preparation for this complicated procedure; suffice it to say that the medical teams at Mayo Clinic are very thorough.
So yesterday, we woke up at 4am so he had time to shower and get dressed, grabbed our bags, and left the house at 5am to arrive at the hospital for check-in at 5:30am. He checked in on the surgical floor and filled out a one-page form while we waited to be called back to pre-op. When they called his name, they asked me to wait in the waiting room for about 30 minutes while they got him changed and into the bed with all the necessary IV lines and monitors. Then, they escorted me back to see him as we waited for the anesthesiologist’s & surgeons’ teams to come assess him.
Bryan & I were able to pray together in a moment when there were no other staff in the room; we prayed for the Lord to be with us, heal Bryan’s body, and we prayed for all the doctors and nurses, and any other staff who would be involved in the surgeries. Shortly afterward, a hospital chaplain even came to the pre-op room to pray with us too; as he was leaving, he gave Bryan a tiny yellow origami crane, “which stands for good luck and longevity.”
Overall, Bryan spent about 8 1/2 hours in the operating room, from anesthesia administration to closing sutures. Meanwhile, I tried to occupy my mind with work, calling/texting family & friends with updates, scrolling on social media, and reading a good book. I tried to make myself get up from my seat every 30 minutes to walk a couple laps around the waiting room.
The thoracic surgeon had a really hard time finding the mass she was supposed to remove from the surface of Bryan’s right lung, because it had shrunk from its 6mm size and didn’t appear to have active disease. She did finally locate it at performed a wedge resection. (Biopsy results still pending.)
The hepatic surgeon had difficulty with her procedure because the liver was big and had chemo damage. She removed the left lobe of Bryan’s liver (Pathology report also pending), as well as his gall bladder (due to its proximity to the portion of liver she was removing and the fact that there were gall stones detected in his pre-op CT scans). She had some trouble cauterizing some of the blood vessels & bile ducts that were cut during the procedure, but finally got them all to hold, so they won’t be a risk moving forward.
The other interesting thing she told us this morning was that they found significant scar tissue from his previous surgery in January. It’s nothing that the previous surgeon did wrong, but whenever the abdomen is exposed to open air, the internal organs tend to stick to each other when closed back up. If that happens, adhesions form, creating scar tissue that can wrap itself around intestines and cause an obstruction. So they spent extra time clearing the scar tissue and applying a special dissolvable film around his internal organs to prevent that from happening again. Like I said before… Mayo Clinic doctors are very thorough!
At 4:40pm, I got a text notification that the surgeon was closing him up, and waited another hour + 40 minutes to be called to go back to see him in recovery.
To be continued…