Esophagectomy

5:30 PM Update - Steve has been moved to post-anesthesia care.  Encountered some post surgery pain issues and his epidural had to be repositioned.  All is good now and he should be moving to room #703 soon.

4:00 PM Update - Steve is sill not out of recovery.  Has some swelling around one of the tubes and they want to wait until that goes down before releasing him to a regular room.

2:00 PM Update - Surgery complete and Steve is doing well!  Surgeon spoke with Denbie and told her everything went quite well.  They found a spot on his liver, biopsied it, and it came back clean.  Inspected his lungs and they looked all clear as well.  Doc told her Steve is a very strong man.  Of course we all knew that already!  :) 

Thank God for protecting Steve today, guiding the surgeon's hands and giving Denbie strength.  We will continue to pray and now focus on healing. 

12:30 PM Update - Surgery still going well. Steve is on his side now, a couple of hours left. MDA has his room ready for when he gets out, and Jadon and Denbie are moving their stuff in.

You can send Steve/Denbie a message by clicking HERE. 
Name:  Steven Nash
Date of Birth:  07/31/1949
Patient No.:  0803100

10:30 AM Update – Nurse just came out and provided the first update. They have made the chest incision and will be rolling him onto his side for the side incision. Surgery is going well so far. Will get updates every 2 hours, expect him to be in there until 2-3 PM.

6:00 AM - Steve went through all of the re-diagnostic testing last week and the chemo and radiation appeared to be very successful. The CT scan and endoscope showed a significant size reduction in the mass and a PET scan indicated the cancer had not spread to any lymph nodes or metastasized somewhere else. Biopsies taken during the endoscope all came back clear and free of cancer. For a brief moment we all thought this might have been enough to eliminate the need for surgery but the Doctors at MD Anderson still felt confident the esophagectomy was the best course of action. They way the surgeon explained it to Steve was that even though the biopsies came back clean, they just couldn't possibly sample all of the tissue. His original tumor was so large that there was no way for them to confirm that every single cancer cell had been destroyed. So with that advise and after much consideration, all moved ahead for the scheduled surgery. Which brings us to today...


Denbie and Steve left our house around 4:30 AM headed to MDA to check in. Steve's surgery is scheduled for first thing this morning. From what we’ve been told (or read) to expect, the surgery will take 6-10 hours. Dr. Vaporciyan will be doing the surgery. Jadon and Vikki Benoit will be meeting Denbie at the hospital this morning. Please pray for Dr. Vaporciyan and his surgical staff, for Steve and for Denbie. We’ll post an update as soon as we hear.