July 15th

I had the Hickman Surgery today. No more masters swim classes for six weeks or more now! It was unbelievably quick and unintrusive. They used a MAC for the Anesthesia. MAC=Managed Anesthesia Care, I believe-- essentially a bunch of good sedatives, local anethetics and other stuff mean that I was not awake, but could easily be roused in an emergency-- this is low risk and works great for minor procedures. This was really nice in that I was awake and cogniscent quickly following the procedure and was up and walking in very short order. Proving that the hospital staff is human, I suppose, the nursing staff forgot to give me a complete care package for the catheter and nobody actually showed me how to clean the incision area or properly take care of the catheter. According to the written directions, it looks pretty simple, but a demonstration is much more valuable in this situation. I am looking forward to getting this demonstration from somebody with the oncologist's office. Dr Richard Fox seemed very competent and did what appears to be a great technical surgery. Hours after local anesthetic wore off, I had very little pain and the catheter is well placed on the left side of my body . . .
Nice job to all!