My husband's surgery was Tuesday, Dec 20 and it lasted 6 1/2 hours!!!!! I"m sure the surgeon was exhausted...I sure was waiting that long. It went well...he got all the cancer, didn't see any lymph node involvement. Today is Friday, Dec 23 day 3 after the surgery. Joe was up walking around the next day after surgery, with 2 chest tubes, an epidural, catheter and feeding tube, and a tube coming out his nose that sucked the stuff off his 'stomach' Today, Joe was hooked up to the feeding tube. and the cath was removed after the epidural was removed. The chest tubes were taken out yesterday. He is quite weak as he has lost about 35 pounds all in all...since before he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer back in August of this year. The surgery was to remove all the esophagus and the top portion of the stomach and attach the remaing stomach to the area at the back of the throat, there was a risk of the vocal cords being cut...but he's talking and catches himself when he starts cracking jokes...it hurts due to the incision from his navel to just below the rib cage.

I want to thank all of you who have interceded on my and Joe's behalf.

My short term memory loss just about didn't allow me to log on to strokenet while I'm in the library of the hospital checking my email. I made several attempts at remembering what I needed to put as the web address in the search engine...but achieved success when I did a gooogle search for Jean Riva. Thank you,Jean. I couldn't think of Steve's last name...duh..Mallory!

I'm a fish out of water without my Mac and having to use the Dell in the hospital library, but technology is amazing... I never would have dreamed I could communicate with friends so easily from home as well as away.