The Biopsy at Last

March 15, 2007 Link Amma's Grace

Today Annika had a Core biopsy of the tumor on the Kidney. This is a step up from the Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) which was done at AIMS, with a little more risk of bleeding, etc. Annika had to starve from midnight onwards, with no water even, in preparation. They offered to connect a drip many times, but Anni didn’t want one. In the morning we had to change her pain medication from pills to injected morphene, since she was not able to have the pill without food. The morphene did not work for about 2 hrs, during which Anni was most irritable due to the pain. It also had the effect of making her quite groggy, but that has been the general effect of all the pain medications so far… The Biopsy was at 1 pm. It was performed by Dr Chang, an older, very experienced man. He patiently answered all of our questions, which was nice. He even gave me a step-by-step of what he was going to do, and went through all of our “if-then”s. We wheeled Anni there in a wheelchair, as she just was NOT up to walking. Infact, she hasn’t walked much except a little bit outside yesterday after the scans and a little around our little room. Right now she’s sleeping.

So the nurse took Anni into the proceedure room, we went out to wait. While we were waiting, we saw a little girl sitting up in her gurny attached to all sorts of tubes, with a huge line of stitches up the back of her head, looking just like a little ANGLE coming in from the ICU for a CT scan. Her dad told me her name was Kimberly, that she had had a successful Brain Tumor removal, but that her lungs had subsequently collapsed. She was 16. So please add her to your lists…

After about 45 minutes, the nurse told us that Anni’s procedure was over, that she would be out shortly. After about 15 minutes, Annika was wheeled out on a strecher, with an attached IV, etc. She was groggy, but not in pain. She told us about it, she had been concious during the whole thing, and had even seen the specimens! The Dr told us that there had been quite a bit of bleeding, he had had to embolize it with some foam pellets and Thrombin solution. However, he did not think that it was any problem. He also thought that the samples (3 of them) had been quite good, that they should be good enough for a definitive examination.

Dr Sudarshan was present during the proceedure. Oh! The LP (Lumbar Puncture) was postponed till tomorrow, since they needed Annika to be fully concious while they draw off the CSF (Cerebro-Spinal Fluid).

Finally at about 2pm we reached our room, and Annika was transferred to the bed there. She had to lie on top of the bandage until 4 pm to ensure that it clotted properly inside her. Right now it’s about 7pm, and she’s sleeping normally, awaiting a pizza to fill her stomach.
Aum Amriteshwaryai Namah
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