First Appointment at Huntsman

Today we had our first appointment at the Huntsman Cancer Institute! I was very impressed with all the Doctors and Staff, looks like Thomas is in great hands!
His appointment was at 8:00 am.. We first met with a PA named Nate, he was very nice, he did an exam and then got some medical history, then he sent in Dr. Bentz. Dr Bentz came in and looked at it and wanted to get a Biopsy of his own, so they did a punch biopsy. Then Dr Bentz told us what would happen next.. He said that with the type of tumor that he has, its possible that it could spread to his chest, so he wanted to get a CT of his chest. He told us that Thomas needs to have surgery. He said he would need to have the tumor and all the skin surrounding it removed, he would have to have a Tracheotomy put in while he is still awake the morning of surgery, he will have to have the Fibula bone taken out of his leg, along with the vessels and then they will put the bone into his mouth to replace his jaw bone and he will also have metal plates and screws holding it all together, he will have a incision from his ankle to his knee cap, and then down by the ankle they will have to remove quite a bit of skin so then they will have to use some skin from his upper thigh to graph the skin by the ankle. The dr said it would be about a 14 hour surgery, along with a 7-10 hospital stay. He will have to have the trach in while he is at the hospital and then if he breathing well then he can have it removed for when he goes home. he will also have to do speech therapy. Also, since he is having a bone removed from his leg, he wont be able to walk normal, his foot will drop down slightly causing him to walk a bit differently. He will also have to do physical therapy. Once the surgery is done, he will need to do radiation. The Dr didn't go into much about the radiation yet, so i don't have much info to post about that. He also had some blood drawn today to make sure everything looks okay. We have to go back to Huntsman on Wednesday at 6:30pm for a scan of his legs, and then on Thursday we go back again to meet the anesthesiologist and to meet a doctor that will be helping Dr. Bentz. Dr Bentz goes out of town after thomas's surgery and so the Dr we will be meeting will be taking over once Dr Bentz leave. Thomas surgery is scheduled for Jan 22!! We are grateful that we were able to get into huntsman very quickly and that they are able to do the surgery soon as well!