Update from Surgery #2

When I dropped Jim off this morning, the plan was to operate on his right hand, saving the newest confirmed biopsy (the one on his left hand, biopsied during the last surgery) to be addressed next month.  The doctor carefully examined both hands and felt like it was best to make a change of plans.  Consequently, today's surgery was again on his left hand.  Factoring into the change was that Jim's skin graft is not healing as well as the doc had hoped.  He felt that Jim has been using his hand and moving it too much, causing some of the edges of the graft to separate.  Regardless of which hand was operated on, he was going to splint his left hand to help the graft site heal.  Obviously, having both hands unusable could pose a problem for daily life.  In addition to those considerations, Jim had two new suspicious spots pop up on his left hand since his last surgery.  The doctor decided to operate on the known spot and biopsy the other two, all on his left hand.  This time, the team would read the biopsy immediately.  If the biopsies came back positive, he would operate on all three spots on his left hand today.  In the following picture, the location marked "A" is the spot that was biopsied last time and known to be cancer, "B" and "C" are the new biopsies.

Pre-Surgery 6/25/14 - Left Hand

Unfortunately, both of today's biopsies came back cancerous and all three spots were surgically removed.  On the upside, we are so grateful they biopsied and operated on the same day.  That is a huge, huge blessing, saving us an additional surgery to Jim's busy dance card.  Luckily, the doctor was able to stitch up each new surgical site without needing another graft.  That is also a huge blessing.    

Post-surgery 6/24/14 - Left Hand

 The following picture shows his hands now.  His left hand is splinted and well wrapped.  The stitches will come out in about two weeks.  The pen marks on his right hand are around one confirmed cancerous spot and another concerning spot.  We are very grateful that they are keeping a close eye on all of these spots - marking them and keeping a detailed medical photo journal.

Post Surgery 6/24/14 

So, for now we are doing very well.  Jim is under strict orders to seriously baby his hand and take it easy.  We will be watching lots of movies and relaxing quite a bit in the days to come.  Thank you for the concern, thoughts and prayers.  We will just keep taking each day as it comes.