Andy’s Dad

Things with Andy’s dad are going.  I wouldn’t say they are going well, but they are going.  Since his original surgery, he has had two more for infection.  The first was last Friday, a week after the original surgery.  He was running a fever, and they rushed him back to the IU Med Center.  He went in for surgery that day to clean out the incision and to see where the infection was.  Then Andy’s mom called at midnight two nights ago, and he couldn’t breathe and they believed the infection was worse.  At that point, they did something, but I honestly don’t remember what.  Andy went up to the hospital at midnight and came back home about 6 in the morning with his parents’ dog, Keegan.  Keegan is staying with us indefinitely.  Yesterday Andy’s dad had another surgery, and they increased the size of his incision, so he currently has an incision that is 3 inches by 7 inches in his back, and they are packing a special gauze in it to keep air from leaking.  They removed part of two of his ribs to get where the needed, and will eventually be removing two more and using them to create a kind of vertical cage.  There is a lot of bad stuff going on, and a lot of bad stuff that can happen, so he’s staying put in the ICU for now as they try to get the area where his right lung once was to fill with fluid….he’ll also eventually have a surgery where they will take some of his own body fat and put it in that area to help it fill.  But all of that is down the road, once the infection is gone, and the danger is lessened.  The pathology report came back yesterday, and of the 22 lymph nodes they tested, one of them was cancerous, which means that it had spread out of the lung that was removed.  So once he is physically able, he will undergo a round of chemotherapy to attempt to remove the cancer.  The doctors are still positive on his eventual outcome, and keep repeating that he is young and he is strong, and both of those are working in his favor.  At this point, we covet your prayers!