For those of you who are still keeping score at home, this is the week that Jack will have his thymoma removed at the Mayo Clinic. His procedure is scheduled for Wednesday, July 7th. This post is a brief description of how we think this week will go.

Monday

Jack and Naomi will head down to Rochester in the afternoon. There are some labs and test scheduled for the day. Their hotel room is within walking distance of the Mayo Clinic complex. (It has a tunnel to the complex, too.)

Tuesday

A day of tests and meetings starts early. Both Jack and Naomi will get tested for COVID-19. (They’re both vaccinated, but it’s a Mayo requirement.) The Jack will submit to what will certainly be many blood draws and other pre-op tests. In the afternoon, they meet with the thoracic surgery team, led by the Canadian Dr. Cassivi, to get final details about the procedure and to get instructions for post-operative care.

Wednesday

This is the big day. The laparoscopic surgery should take about 2-3 hours. Naomi, together with Tim, will be allowed to be in a hospital waiting room, and the surgical team will periodically relay messages. When the procedure is done, Dr. Cassivi will come speak with Naomi to tell her himself how everything went. The thymoma will be kept for analysis in the event (50-50 chance?) that it’s not entirely benign.

Jack is planning to be kept in the hospital for at least one night, of course depending how he is doing.

Nobody knows what time of day Jack will have his procedure. The way Mayo works has the patient call after 8pm the day before their procedure to find out when they need to report for preparations. Remarkable! When we know more, we’ll try to post information on this blog.

Thursday

If all goes well, Naomi will drive Jack back home on Friday where he will continue his recuperation. If Jack needs to stay longer at the Mayo for his initial recovery, he will be allowed to do so. Other than that, we don’t know much about how the recovery will go.

The only thing we know for sure is that Dr. Cassivi will send Jack home with a lung pillow that looks like this.

The lung pillow Dr. Cassivi will send hom with Jack.

Dr. Cassivi says the will pillow allow Jack wrap his arms around it to take pressure of his incisions. That makes us think that pain management will be important during the first few days, at least.

Going Forward

Needless to say, we all hope that Jack’s surgery goes well, that his thymoma turns out to be entirely benign, that he can leave for home on Thursday, and that his recovery is speedy and easy.

Jack wants to thank everybody for the cards and the well wishes and their prayers. He appreciates that you are thinking about him and cheering on his recovery. He’s still effected by the West Nile virus and what it did to his body, but he and his doctors agree that his body is strong and ready for this week’s excitement.