Thursday , January 10

I wanted to thank all of you for your support as my dad has gone through cancer diagnosis and initial treatment in the last few weeks. He had his major surgery today. It lasted about seven hours and they removed his right kidney, about half of his liver and part of the diaphragm, most of this was expected. The surgery was very high risk, they replaced 23 units of blood, but he is recovering now and we are very thankful he made it through the surgery. The procedure itself went about as good as it could have given everything that was involved. He is still on a ventilator in ICU and probably will be for a day or so and the next 24-48 hours remains a time of high risk. Most of the acute pain and difficulty breathing he has experienced this month should be basically resolved when he wakes up, so that's great news.

Unfortunately, they were not able to remove all of the cancerous tumor because of it's involvement in the diaphragm and inferior vena cava. While this isn't the news we had hoped for, we won't know what the long term prognosis or treatment path will be until the pathology report comes back early next week.

Thanks again for your support, I'll keep you posted as we learn more.

James