Friday, June 26, 2009

Tommy came through the endoscopic procedure on Tuesday very well, except that he had a reaction to the anesthesia afterward and needed a catheter. That's working out okay and the plan is that it will be removed on Monday. During the procedure, Dr. Caruso got the endoscope down to where the common bile duct meets the intestine; he expected to find a 1-cm. gall stone that had shown up on the tests last week, but that gall stone was no longer there. However, there were numerous smaller gall stones, so Doctor Caruso made a small incision at the junction to allow some of them to pass through. On Tuesday, Tommy will again give blood for a liver panel, to see if the enzymes have come down. If not, Dr. Caruso will look more closely at the liver itself (possibly, a liver biopsy) for the cause of the problem. The good news is that the MRI and the MRCP showed no sign of liver cancer or cirrhosis of the liver. So, at this point, we know there is inflammation, but we don't know why. This weekend, Steve is hanging with Tommy, as I am attending the wedding of my godson Jesse in Michigan. I asked Tommy on the phone this morning if he's having fun with his son, and he said, "Oh yes...he's like an old wife." Steve says that the two of them had a good time watching wrestling on tv last night and that when Steve asked him if he and I ever watched it, Tommy said no. Ugh--that's for sure. So things are looking up for now.