Rachel is in the pediatric ICU (pediatrics mostly due to her small size, but also her age being barely an adult.) We just got done visiting her there. They are keeping her fully sedated and comfortable and on a breathing tube overnight since it was such a long surgery and it’s late. The plan is to take her off sedation and remove the tube in the morning. They will also be getting her up and out of bed tomorrow. Her face is really swollen after being on her stomach for surgery all day (another reason to keep the tube in.) Her body temp is also low so they have her wrapped in blankets and a warming heater. She had to have a blood transfusion during surgery, which we knew was a possibility, especially since she was still a bit anemic from her last round of chemo last month.

The surgeon reviewed the tumor cells with the pathologist. They were unable to see the tumor for part of it because of calcification, so they need to do something to de-calcify it in order to test how much of the cells were viable. There was another part that they did see had no viable cells, which is great news.

The surgeon had to remove two nerve roots near the spinal cord and had to “oversew” them to make sure no spinal fluid leaked. He scraped off the scar tissue from the dura of the spinal cord and didn’t see any viable tumor there either. The radiation oncologist was worried that it wouldn’t heal if he used the radioactive plaque on the dura of the cord because the surgeon had to oversew the nerve roots – and since they didn’t see any viable tumor there, they decided not to use the internal radiation plaque treatment.

The surgeon removed all of what he had planned to remove (the transverse process, part of the vertebrae, part of the rib, two nerve roots) and was able to use the carbon fiber supporting screws.

The plastic surgeon was able to use a different muscle (the trapezius muscle instead of the lattisimus dorsi) that’s closer to the incision because of how the other surgeon did his work. I’m not entirely sure what that means but he made it sound like good news.

I’ll update more tomorrow once Rachel’s awake.