April 18th, 2016

I write this from a room on the pediatric inpatient floor of MSKCC where I await the removal of my chest tube. It's the only thing keeping me from leaving the hospital at this point, but it has to stop draining fluid before they take it out. Makes sense. The amount it has been draining has been "slowing a little bit" for a couple days now. Which I have to say is better than speeding up! It could always be worse, or at least, more complicated. As for the biopsy itself, the procedure went fine and they removed as many possibly suspicious nodes as they could find. The one they sent for a quick test showed tumor activity, but until the full pathology report comes back at the end of the week we won't know much more. Likely, the future plan of action includes radiation to my chest and probably chemo as well. 

All the other aspects of recovery from my biopsy/surgery Thursday have been smooth as can be, and other than a stiffness in my left side which I only notice when I move a lot or am asked about it, I feel completely fine and normal. This is no doubt due, at least in part, to the hydromorphone I am on. A very low dose, but still enough that my brain is often just a little bit foggy, which makes it hard to write or do simple arithmetic with numbers above 20. Christina and I played ticket to ride yesterday, and I was, suffice to say, not quite on top of my game when it came to moving the points marker up and adding the destination ticket points at the end. There's really not much else to say. My mind is too foggy to come up with anything super interesting, but I just wanted to update how it's going. In short, uneventful, which is a lot better than hectic and unexpectedly complicated or busy.