Ray AFTER Surgery UPDATE FULL Gastrectomy Gastric Cancer

hello everybody happy Sunday to you it is about 12 o'clock here where I'm at I am still in Duarte at the City of Hope campus here with Ray I've been here since Thursday I know I said I'd come on either Friday or Saturday and try to give you all an update but life has been a bit hectic and chaotic and I know you all are going to tell me not to worry uh but it's just kind of been a whirlwind of emotions a roller coaster of emotions and events and so things have finally simmered down and I just needed to get out of the hospital take a walk get some fresh air because it's such a nice day out and I came across this tree look at how gorgeous that is it is just such a big beautiful tree the campus here is just breathtaking the gardens are gorgeous and when I saw this tree I thought wow I'm just gonna sit under that tree get some shade and the breeze and film and update what better place I was feeling the inspiration under this cool tree look at how cool that is it's just gorgeous so Ray went I'm not going to be editing this by the way because it's going to be done on my phone and I'm just going to upload it straight from my phone up to YouTube so it's pretty off the cuff uh we've been here since Thursday where I went into surgery at nine o'clock Thursday morning we left our house at about 3 30 because it's a bit of a ways from where we live and uh before surgery Dr Wu came and talked to us and she did let us know that she would not be doing or having the liver procedure done the ablation done on raised liver that day that she wasn't feeling very comfortable about it because it was such a big invasive surgery and it was on the longer side of being five hours and she wasn't sure how Ray was going to tolerate the surgery given the circumstances of him getting weaker as the surgery approached so we were a little deflated about that but in the end we were thinking okay at least the tumor in his stomach in his cardia the base of his esophagus is going to be removed she anticipated the surgery taking three to five hours and so we were thinking Ray would be out anywhere around 12 1 o'clock ish um the time kind of rolled by one o'clock World by three o'clock rolled by five o'clock at six o'clock and we kept getting updates every two hours that um the procedure was still going on uh there were no complications but um it was taking a bit longer than she had anticipated I think uh anybody when they hear that news or that kind of an update it kind of leaves you a little unsettled because you're kind of wondering what was it that is taking a bit longer than she anticipated and I think that's where all of our minds kind of went and I'm an overthinker so I definitely uh was overthinking and just anxiety written about it the surgery ended up lasting a total of 11 hours which was yeah that's a huge surgery Dr Wu asked us to meet her up in the lobby that she wanted to talk to us and you know when you hear that I was you know just nervous and Kayla's sitting there telling me Mom what doctor isn't going to want to talk to you after an 11 hour surgery of course she is so we went in we sat down with her and she said that when she opened Ray up uh everything looked okay but she saw that his esophagus was uh quite um Extended and stretched out and so once um once she opened up the esophagus she saw that the tumor in his esophagus had grown to be four times the size it was eight to ten weeks ago which was very uh concerning to her and alarming she thought that she was going to have to close Ray up and not do the surgery but upon looking at the tumor she was quite perplexed at the fact that the tumor was encapsulated even though it had grown four times the size that it had been eight to ten weeks ago and so it didn't spread out along the tissue surrounding tissue it grew within itself and so it stayed encapsulated it just got bigger and closed up Rey's esophagus his esophagus was a hundred percent obstructed and she didn't know how Rey was functioning every day the right the way Ray was functioning every day was not that of an obstructed esophagus and so it was no wonder how he made it through every day with absolutely no real pain medicine other than three Advil here and there every maybe eight or ten hours and and she asked if Ray had been eating and he was eating a little bit but he had really stuck to soft foods and so she said you know your son is a fighter he has a high threshold to pain and uh had become stoic to what he was feeling so it had become a normal and he had adjusted to the pain she decided to proceed on with the surgery she took out as much of his esophagus as she could and completely took out his stomach and some of the surrounding lymph nodes that were inflamed and because Rey had tolerated the surgery so well she thought that she would go ahead and ask Dr Kessler if he wanted to come in and do the ablation Dr Kessler did come in and tried to do the ablation he was able to only touch one of the lesions the other lesions because of where the incision was was a bit too hard for him to get to and he wasn't confident enough that he could do the full ablation which is really burning and killing the cancer on Rey's liver and doing the whole really killing it in its entirety that last lesion and when Dr Wu started the surgery she hadn't taken into consideration that Rey was going to tolerate the surgery very well and so she didn't do the incision uh I guess that would have helped Dr Kessler perform his procedure which would have been a different one she had to break all of Ray's ribs on one side to get to the esophagus and the incision is a pretty gnarly incision on Rey it made me cry when I saw it in Dr Wu's words this surgery was a success she got all of the cancerous tumor out of Rey's stomach now is there any floating cancer cells we don't know one of the lesions on Ray's liver has been killed so there is only one left and Dr Kessler said that he will try this procedure or do this procedure again in about three to four weeks once Rey has recovered from this surgery um since the surgery Ray has been in quite a bit of pain he's got a lot of tubes coming out of him he's got a test tube he's got a GI tube that's going down his nose into his throat he's got a couple other drainage tubes in his abdomen and uh right now it's just about pain management and keeping him comfortable getting his bowels moving again getting his kidneys working again without a catheter and uh yeah just keeping him as pain free as we can um Dr Wu is very happy with race progression we're at about I want to say the 50 hour mark after surgery and she is very happy with how he is progressing his catheter was taken out his kidneys started to function last night which was a great sign and he was able to use the restroom um we just need his Pals to wake up I know this is a little bit TMI but this is stuff that happens with surgery he hasn't had a fever so that is great news I'm not gonna knock on wood since it's a tree there haven't been any major complications other than the pain Rey is very anxious about the tube that's going down his throat he doesn't much like it but she said with any hope that should be out today if there's no more discharge and air coming out of the tube and into the container raise Outlook and Spirits are good he's happy that tumor is out of him when he woke up he said that the pain he felt before the surgery was gone the pressure of that tumor that was just stretching out his esophagus and uh he didn't feel what he thought was the acid reflux but wasn't the acid reflux it was the tumor and uh I will tell you that Dr Wu said that had he not had this surgery or had the cancer spread to the surrounding tissue rate only had a few weeks to live that's hard to hear I've been crying so much I don't know that I have any tears left honestly I feel like I'm in this State of Shock right now or just functioning to get through each day and to keep race spirits up um so yeah she came in to see him today and was just again real happy um with what's going on she's not worried too much about the lesion on raised liver that's left Ray will be doing chemotherapy again for any of the floating cancer cells that could be left in his system and that way she can just concentrate on attacking the liver when it's time and then Dr Kessler can do what he needs to do to raise liver as well as for Kayla Ali and I where I wish I could say that we're hanging in there um I mean I guess we are in some aspects but it's a whole new journey and although it's a journey of healing for right now and not so much of a fight it's it's a hard journey to watch your kid go through and I feel like I'm just existing and functioning right now and just trying to get through each hour and help break it through each hour but the good news is the surgery was a success the tumor is gone and it had grown immensely and it's gone and so that is the win for today yesterday and the day before I appreciate all of you thinking about us sending us your strength your well wishes your positive energies your thoughts and prayers it means more than you can even imagine I will ask that you just continue to watch my videos please because I don't know when I'll be able to upload another DIY or work because this is a bit consuming really just making sure that Ray is comfortable is the top priority and YouTube is my only job so if I'm not working I'm not getting paid but those videos if you're watching them I'm gonna get paid and it will help immensely um thank you all again I'm gonna pop off of here and go back upstairs and see to Rey and upload this to you all so you can all have some peace of mind that we made it through the surgery and I'm gonna say today he is doing well he's in a bit of pain but they're changing his pain medicine and he is doing better than expected and that again is another win so I will keep you updated in the next couple of days stay happy stay safe stay healthy but most of all stay positive everybody because I sure respect I'm trying bye

Channel: Kelly Barlow Creations

Views: 148,296

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Id: GFgbbbzMTXc

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023