All's Well....

I  know that the family has been waiting to hear about my dad's surgery, so I thought I'd let everyone know what happened yesterday at once. :)  Dad went into surgery at 7:45 am CST yesterday for a procedure that was expected to take between 3.5 and 4 hours.  At about 12:15, the surgeon came out to give us the news.  Dad made it through surgery just fine.  They did an arthroscopic procedure to reintroduce blood flow to his legs and to fix two separate aneurysms in his body.  Everything went well and now the arteries are fixed and he has blood flow to his legs.  However, he paid a price.  During the procedure, they sent a catheter in through his arm to try to gain access to the arteries that needed to be fixed.  However, they were unable to use the arm arteries to reach their required destinations.  So they went in through two different incisions on either side of his groin.  Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal.  However, they irritated the veins in the arm to the point that they swelled and began to press on the nerves in the arm.  He was left to suffer severe pain in his arm for hours while the veins healed and the swelling went down some to relieve the pressure on the nerves.  Fortunately, the pain had subsided by around 9 last night (after about 8 hours of hell).  He's doing much better today and is looking forward to coming home probably tomorrow.  He's still having trouble keeping food down right now, but we're hopeful the nausea will pass before too long.

I would like to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers over the past weeks.  The fear of the unknown was far greater than the risks associated with the procedure.  Turns out that there wasn't that much to worry about after all.  He'll make a quick recovery and is looking forward to playing golf in the spring.  Thank you for everything and I'll talk to you all soon!!

Bryan