Having VATS lung wedge resection Thurs 7/26-Update July 30

Hello all

My radiation and medical oncologist have been watching a small <2cm RLL radiated nodule that has been slowly increasing in size since Jan 12. I had SBRT Jan 11. I am a surgical candidate to have it removed and biopsied. I am also having a moderate pleural effusion on the left side drained. The pleural effusion has not been interfering with my activities. I was wondering what the recovery time is from those of you who might have had this surgery. And of course, we are all hoping that this surgery will reveal that I am just dealing with late radiation side effects. I strive to cross bridges when I come to them.....

All the best, Leslie

Update July 30

My VATS went very well. The radiated met they were after, in the lower right lobe, came out with clear margins, meaning adjoining tissue was not involved and that problem is removed. That is a good thing because it was in fact colorectal cancer and not scar tissue, which was the other possibility. Lymph nodes in the area appeared fine but were removed for biopsy to be sure. We won't have results on that until follow-up on Aug 7.

We had heard that my surgeon likes to use a scope to look at the lungs via the airway to check them before operating. This time he found a surprise, a growth in the top left upper airway that had not shown up on any of the scans. He took that out too, very carefully. He noted that puncturing the left airway while operating on the right lung would be awkward, but he got it all fine. We won't know what this means until the biopsy results come back, but the fact that it did not "light up" on the PET scan before surgery means that whatever it is, it is not very metabolically active and that's good.

I'm off pain killers as of today. Using Celebrex for my knee which was strapped down during surgery and caused the most pain post-op. They used a paravertebral block, which is like an epidural or spinal block, but on only one side. That did a great job, and was free of some of the side effects of a standard block.

There was a slight air leak where the lung was stitched back up because the tissue has been weakened by previous radiation treatments, but that too is healing well and hardly draining today. We made it home Saturday evening so 2 nights in the hospital.

And so all in all, the news is mostly very good. As is typical for cancer treatment we still have some uncertainties and waiting, but for now the recovery is going well and the only active met they could find is gone. Life is good.