People have been asking why Cindy waited so long to have the surgery.  The answer is complicated.  Cindy has many issues going on, not just the hernia.  The surgery was and had been risky for a very long time.  You can see the blog post from April 2014 below.

Cindy has been doing great today.  She was taken off the vent this morning and is breathing on her own through her trachea.  When we (Rita, Mary and Debbie) walked into her room, she was alert, aware and texting on her phone.  She showed us the incisions from the surgery.  There were 8 due to the complexity of the hernia, liver and other organs.  The picture below is a good representation of what her incisions look like.

Dr. Tsai, her surgeon, was doing another surgery at another hospital.  His assistant Sherri walked into Cindy’s room and was stunned to see her doing so well.  This is what she told us:

• Cindy was stable during the whole surgery.
• The hernia is made of fibrous tissue and fat.  It opened from the abdominal cavity into the thoracic cavity through the diaphragm and acted like a balloon, allowing the stomach to move up.  The surgeon pulled the hernia down and tucked it in place. below the diaphragm which has been closed with mesh.
• The diaphragm was stretched due to the hernia being around for so long.  It is possible for the colon to go through the diaphragm into the thoracic cavity, but not likely.  The stomach is tacked down and not going anyplace.

After Sherri left, Cindy sat in a chair for a couple of hours.  She did well for a couple of hours.  Tomorrow she will have a swallow test to see if she will tolerate a fluid diet.

If you would like to read about Cindy’s journey to this point, you can find it at Cindy’s Status

Below is a reprint of the blog I posted last year:

Friday, April 4, 2014

Robotic Laparoscapy

The underlying cause of Cindy’s “health scare” during the last two months of 2013 is due to a hiatal hernia and her stomach being twisted.  She is in danger of having the blood supply to her stomach being cut off.  She went to a surgeon (Dr. Kwan – see below) today who was confident that she would be able to successfully untwist and move Cindy’s stomach out of her thoracic cavity and repair the hiatal hernia using Robotic Laparoscopy.  Below is a picture showing the hernia (on the left) and Cindy’s stomach (on the right).

The hernia is basically a hole into the thoracic cavity through which her stomach traveled to.  Her stomach is pushing against her right lung (giving her only 40% breathing capacity) and making her heart work harder.  Last Friday (3/28/14) Cindy’s heart had an irregular heart beat (rate of 178) which sent her to the emergency room.  They gave her a shot of digoxin – and some pills for home – which helped her heart but interfered with her oxygen absorption.  She was feeling confused during the weekend and was back in the emergency room the following Monday where they took her off the digoxin.  She is feeling much better now.  Cindy is also anemic and will have a colonoscopy this Monday (4/7/14) to see if there is any internal bleeding.

As long as Cindy’s labs and the results of the colonoscopy are all good and the Pulmonary doctor agrees that Cindy is healthy enough, the surgery will be in six weeks.  She expects to be in the hospital for about 2 days.  Recovery at home should last about 2 weeks.

Above Graphic by http://www.markfuscomd.com/images/incision_nissen.gif