Re: BigMac is in surgery
BigMac's surgery was finished at 5:30pm. That was a very long 6.5 hours of surgery. Whew!
He had 3 surgeons working on him. Of these, two came in to talk to me afterwards. The first thing I heard was that BigMac was already waking up as they barely finished. They had to keep giving him extra sedation because he was not staying asleep as deeply as most animals. Not sure what to think about that.
I know the doctors told me a lot of stuff and drew all sorts of diagrams and showed me X-rays they had on their iPhones... I will need to go over it again tomorrow because my main thing concern was that BigMac was going to be ok. The doctors seemed very animated so I asked if this case was something they saw a lot of ... and they both said, Oh no! BigMac was pretty unusual in the location of the mass and what was involved to get it removed and to repair the stomach, intestines, bile duct and even a bit of pancreas. Without really going into detail it had to do with fixing one thing and then another because they had to move an opening and close another. That was a bad description but for now it will do.
He has 5 tubes snaking into his body. He has a J-tube into his abdomen, E- tube that reaches down to his stomach which they are not using for feeding at this time. I forgot what they said but will find out more tomorrow. He has a weird long perforated tube snaking around in his stomach that they use to monitor what is going on in the stomach... I think stuff comes out of that and they test it. He has a central line in his thigh since they couldn't get the central line in his jugular vein. (Too many recent blood tests there apparently.) And there is another tube but I forgot where/what.
BigMac was kind of lively when I was with him and they gave him more pain meds and he immediately calmed down. He did not fall asleep though. He put his nose to the shirt that I brought and he started kneading it. After a while he rested his head on my hand. I stayed there for almost 2 hours, standing at his cage. I tried to remove my hands and see how BigMac did and I hoped he would be calm and sleep, but he kept picking up his head and moving around. We didn't want him to do that. The surgeon came over and gave him more meds and said that he would rest now so I could leave. I told them I'd be back tomorrow. They smiled and said it would be good for BigMac if I came back.
The surgeons seemed glad to be able to use their skills on my kitty and from their demeanor they felt like they did a great job. One of the surgeons drove up from Atlanta (2 hours) to be a part of this.
My head is still spinning and I haven't eaten anything today... I only had that Dr. Pepper that Julie sent. :lol: So forgive me if I seem wonky.
I want to thank everyone so much for keeping me distracted and encouraged today. It was so very hard to sit there and not know what was happening. At the 4 or 5 hour mark I was inwardly frantic about how long it was taking but you guys brought me back from that despair by pointing out that they wouldn't keep going if it was not going well. That is pretty much what they said to me afterwards.
You guys are SO SMART!!!
Love you to pieces!!!
Vet Tech is about to give him more pain medicine.
Around his neck is some sort of electronic thingy that is supposed to help with pain and edema.
And finally he rests....
