I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to actually write the followup post to Margot’s dad’s surgery. Things here have been a bit of a whirlwind and we’ve just been trying to stay afloat.

Thursday Margot’s dad was admitted into surgery at Beth Israel in Manhattan. The hospital has horrible facilities and one room for family members to sit. There aren’t employees that check in with you periodically and it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle.

So during the surgery the family decided to come back home and spend a few hours - worrying.

Then we all decided to make the trek back into the city on the subway to wait for the surgeon and to see how Manny was doing. We waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, the surgeon came out and said that it seemed a bit worse than they had initially thought and that the small and large intestines had to be cut and reconnected in many different places.

He said that he was able to get 99% of the cancer out and he actually had to scrape and burn the cancer off of the pelvic bone. This, of course, caused concern because once the cancer enters the bone then it becomes very dangerous. The surgeon also called the cancer “aggressive and slow growing.”

By that, he said that it was aggressive to other parts of the body and he seemed shocked that it really hadn’t gone into the major organs. He did think that it had been growing for a while.

When we left the hospital Thursday we were all shell shocked because initially they were going to do an ilestomy bag which would be connected at the top of the intestine and collect unprocessed food.

Upon talking to the surgeon we were shocked to hear that the damage was so bad and that the doctor did not want to put the colon back into place - so he decided to put in a colostomy bag. That means that it’s actually going to collect processed food or poop.

After we heard the news and were going home we stepped off of the subway and Margot’s brother received a call on his cell from the chief resident. He said that Manny was still bleeding and they didn’t know where it was coming from. So they wanted to go back into surgery, open him up, and investigate.

So, everyone came back home and then Margot and Dennis went back to the hospital during the surgery. Of course, the waiting room that sucked initially - was locked. So Margot ended up camping out on the floor outside of the recovery room.

After the second surgery the doctor came in and explained that the bleeding was from the staples and that they took them out and replaced them with stitches and it seemed to go well. However, they also added an ilestomy bag too.

At least he was stable and not bleeding.

The whole family (with the exception of Graem and me) went to the hospital and hung out yesterday for the whole day. It seems that Manny is doing well and they even took out the breathing tubes.

It’s going to be a hard recovery and he will still have to go to the doctor’s office often and even undergo chemo but it seems like we just need to take one day at a time.