Improvement

Iva was moved to a room last night. She now has all IVs out and the surgical drain. She is still on epidural pain meds. She is feeling dizzy and has been having double vision all day today. We are waiting for the pain management doctor to come. He seems to be the only one who has been able to help her these last few days. She is having a rough time right now, but I have been reassuring her that it will get easier. Her poor body has been through so much, it is only expected that she would be feeling bad right now.

Pain doctor just left. He has adjusted her meds. We shall see.

Day 5

Iva woke up on her 5th day in the ICU. Yesterday, they removed the rest of her 7th and 8th ribs, rib 9, and a bunch of soft tissue surrounding that (on her back, left side). They placed a piece of kevlar where they removed the ribs to provide support, protection, etc.

The disappointing part is that the margins were still positive for cancer cells. There are no formed tumors, but there are many many cells completely infecting her chest wall, waiting to become tumors. They cannot take it all out because she needs her chest wall--the muscles and such--to breathe. That is the saddest news. We really were hoping this would eradicate her cancer for a while, that she was be able to breathe, to live, to remember what it is like to be a normal 20 something woman. To be carefree, happy, hopeful again. All this we hoped for. And now, we feel. . . what? Numb. Yes. Angry. Yes. Filled with disbelief. Yes. Devoid of hope. Yes. Waiting to wake from this terrible terrible nightmare. Yes.

The world is full of injustice and tragedy. When you are young, you have the luxury (usually) of thinking it doesn't apply to you. None of us has that luxury any longer.

More Surgery

We just found out Iva will need more surgery tomorrow. The thoracic surgeon and a nuerosurgeon will go and remove a larger area of her chest wall and the two affected ribs. That is all we know for now. No word on pathology, but this must mean they didn't get a wide enough area. We have previously read that for sarcoma, it is imperative to get a wide excision for greater chance of success. Poor Iva. This is heartbreaking, really.

Still Waiting

Iva is still in the intensive care unit. We have no updates from the doctor on the pathology results yet, so we still don't know if she will need more surgery.

Basically they removed four tumors--2 from each lung. They found an unexpected 5th metastasis on her chest wall and had to remove that tissue plus part of two of her ribs--on the left side. Our theory is that the prior surgeon in April who tried to repair her collapsed lung contaminated her chest wall with tumor cells. This all because he didn't know jack shit about sarcoma and was either too idiotic or arrogant to research what the hell he was doing prior to poking around in her chest. If he had bothered to admit that he didn't know what he was doing, he could have learned that that type of surgery is the exact kind you do not do on a patient with sarcoma tumors in the lung. And for this very reason. Shame on him!

She is doing fairly well. She has lots of pain that is keeping her from breathing very deeply. This is giving her the sensation that she is suffocating, which of course, is making her anxious. She is able to talk with us for the brief visiting periods. She is drinking juice. She sat up today in a cardiac chair for three hours. She is getting an MRI of the chest tonight. Tomorrow is tumor board and they will decide what to do. If the margins of the resected tissue are clean, then she won't need any additional surgery. If there are tumor cells in the margins or there isn't a wide enough "clean" area, then they have to go back in and remove more tissue. The surgeon couldn't do it last night since she wasn't expecting it and did not have a neurosurgeon available. She will need one to assist with removal of the additional rib tissue because it extends into the area of spinal nerves and such.

Of course, we are all hoping for clean pathology results with no bone involvement. If the ribs are affected, well, let us know think of that.

ICU

Iva made it through. Found more than they were expecting. Maybe more surgery later this week. More later.

Surgery

Today is the big day! Double lung metastasectomy.

Deposit

Dropped $16,000 today at The Methodist Hospital and almost $5,000 to the surgeon. Iva is scheduled to have surgery Monday, July 26th at 10 a.m. It will take about 5 hours. The surgeon will be deflating each of her lungs. Dangerous business, but not as dangerous as doing nothing.

Approval

We have been approved for Iva's surgery, meaning, they have accepted our offer. It felt much like buying a house, which is really a crazy analogy, but it was just like that. They told us the asking price, we negotiated a down payment and a payment plan for the remaining balance. So now we have to cough up $21,000 between the hospital and doctor's fees, and then she will have surgery on the 26th. We will then need to make payments of $3000 a month until the remaining balance is paid off. The estimate for the total costs is around $50,000+.

We are hoping to kick start some fund raising again. Things have really slowed down to a trickle. It is hard to keep people excited about saving a life of someone they don't see everyday, or maybe even someone they don't know. But in addition to all of our other life duties. this is our other occupation--Saving Iva.

Please tell anyone and everyone you know who may be able to help. We have seen before what word of mouth can do and how generous people can be. She has made it this far only because people have opened their hearts to her. We can only hope that it continues to be so.