An Update Regarding Peggy's Surgery

 

While reading the following, please bear in mind that I hold a power of attorney for Peggy's health care, and this enables me to receive any and all information about her care and to speak and act on her behalf, which, with her added verbal permission, I often do.

As my regular readers know, Peggy has stage four pancreatic cancer and, after months of chemotherapy, was scheduled to have a distal pancreatectomy/splenectomy (aka the removal of her spleen and lower pancreas) on January 27th. Because the cancer has spread to a bone in her hip called the ilium, she will have to undergo a second surgery to remove that tumor. Radiation treatments had initially driven the cancer in her hip into submission, but now that it is showing signs of becoming active again, speed matters, both to keep the cancer in her hip from becoming too big to remove, and to keep the pancreatic cancer from spreading beyond her hip. Last week, she learned that her surgeon's website had listed her January 27th surgery as a "robotic (XI) assisted laparoscopic pancreatectomy duodenostomy whipple." This threw us into something akin to a blind panic because we didn't know if her insurance would cover the last minute change to the correct surgery. Fortunately, insurance had already approved the correct surgery, and no one at her doctor's office seems to know why her doctors' website named an incorrect surgery. This brings us to this week... 

Peggy’s surgery was scheduled for 12:55 on January 27th. At 2:00 o’clock, a nurse manager named Laura Smith came to Peggy’s room and said that a prior surgery was taking hours longer than expected, and that Peggy’s surgery had been cancelled. As Peggy collapsed in tears, Laura asked that we call her if there was anything she could do; handed us a letter stating that the hospital “would like to express sincerely (sic) apologies for the cancellation of your surgery/procedure today:” and left the room without saying another word.

When we got home at 3:30, I called Laura to ask that she use whatever influence she has to get the surgery rescheduled as soon as possible. She said that Peggy’s surgeon, Diego Muilenburg, had already promised to do the surgery ASAP, by which he meant late this week or early next week. When I said that Diego’s “ASAP” in December had meant six weeks, and I was afraid that we might face another long delay, Laura repeated what she had already said. She did not seem pleased to hear from me.

Diego called yesterday evening at 6:30 and gave Peggy a tentative date of February 13th for her surgery and said that he wasn’t at all sure if he could do it then because he didn’t know if a robot would be available. I immediately wrote to Peggy’s oncologist, and asked if he could find her a surgeon who could operate sooner. His office called this morning and said he could not. Diego’s office also called this morning and confirmed the February 13th surgery date.

By this morning (January 28th), Peggy’s low mood had rebounded. It’s typical with us that she falls fast but recovers quickly, whereas I might appear to fall slower, but once I am down, I don’t soon get up. I work very hard and very well in many ways to support Peggy, but maintaining a buoyant mood is more than I can do. Because getting this surgery done before the cancer spreads further is Peggy’s only shot at life, I think it could have been done sooner than two months. Whatever the reason it wasn’t, I see no evidence that her surgeon places much importance upon her life. When he called her last night, she complained of having to go through the extensive pre-surgical preparation a second time. When she mentioned the fast and laxatives as among her complaints, he didn’t say he was sorry that she had to endure that. He instead said that not ordering something so completely unnecessary would be a learning lesson to his team.