Bronchoscopy and Mediastinoscopy

Hi there! I want to thank everyone who has commented on this blog, or texted me about the blog, or stopped to chat with me about it. It makes me feel connected and comforted; this would be a much  poorer, more difficult journey without you all. I am very grateful to you for your support.

  This is Swedish Hospital - it is over a city block big. all the offices and specialty towers take up more and more blocks. It is quite a impressive place.

I had another bronchoscopy there Wednesday evening along with a mediastinoscopy.
The bronchoscopy is where they put you on a ventilator and stick a flexible tube into your lung. It is lighted and allows the doc to see in there and also pass small tools down. Dr. Gilbert was trying to snatch pieces of the two lymph nodes that lit up the PET scan.
The mediastinoscopy is more invasive. Dr. Aye cut an opening in my middle upper chest and looked at the lymph nodes in my airway. He likewise was trying to get some good pieces of the lymph nodes to see if any of them were cancerous.
Everything went well, but I had some trouble with the anesthesia. I just could not wake up completely.

  This is Gemmalyn, my recovery room nurse. She is from Oahu and signed a two-year contract with Swedish when she finished college there. She is an only child and misses home. So when she fulfills her contract she will probably go back to the islands even tho she loves Swedish. Her parents miss her like crazy and her dad recently paid too ship her car to Seattle, because its a good car and she is used to driving it and he wants her to be safe on the road. She was just as sweet as could be! I swear I heard her say the car had 2 doors on one side and only 1 on the other - but that may have been the anesthesia. :)

The docs had hoped to have results today, but evidently that did not happen. We called a couple of times, but did not hear back.

This was a piece of urban art we saw on our morning walk. I thought it was too weird and too cool not to share... well, for some reason it wanted to open the blog, not close it and I can't get it moved. sigh. I am soo bad with technology.

Have a great weekend everyone! Thank you again for all you are doing to lift me up.