Surgery  27Oct2004

Needless to say I recall very little about the actual
surgery, so only am going by what Candace and others have
told me.

    I was wheeled into OR about 0800 and the anesthesia was started
pretty soon thereafter.  By about 0900 Dennis Kraus (ENT) and
Raja Flores (thoractic) began to get access to the front of the 
throat with an incision wrapping around the neck and then vertically
downward into the chest.   Critical structures such as the vocal chord
nerves and cartoid arteries were carefully "traced".

	Mark Bilsky then removed the tumor from the neck and upper
chest.  This is largely a suction process.  Next started the spinal
portion, removing the infected C5 and C6 vertebral bodies and the three 
associated disks and replacing them with a length of tibia
from the bone bank.  A titanium plate is then affixed to C4 and C7,
spanning the gap.  All screws are covered with thin bone grafts scraped from
other portions of the cervical spine.  Bilsky and Patrick Boland (orhto)
are in charge of this portion of the surgery. 
	It is now about 1600 and a 90+ minute pause is taken to bring
me far enough back into reality to check neurological function before
flipping me over for the posterior work.

	The work from the back includes stripping tumor from the C5 and
C6 nerve roots and the right vetebral artery and well as removing any
tumor from the foramina in that region.   Tricky stuff.  Titanium
rods are then screwed in, spanning C3 to T1.  It is now 2200 and the 
surgical portion is over,
with some 10+ hours of work by the surgeons.  By 2400 I have finally
moved all extremities and am deemed "in recovery", some 16 hours after
the start of anesthesia.

	I spend much of 28 Oct (Thur) in the recovery room, awaiting a
bed to open in the neuro-observation unit, into which I am transferred
about 1400.