A Diet of JELL-O and Much Friend's Love

We have had a busy weekend. First there was a friendly supper on Saturday night, a Last Supper with nine apostles before the obligatory pre-surgery fast of Sunday. Not austere in the least, there was no Judas to be found at that supper; only good friends, relentless in humour and nobody holy. The night was shortened when Jonas could not digest the wine he had had. He puked behind the St.Elizabeth and came back on the terrasse to make a speech to the apostles before going home.

Sunday was spent in JELL-O. Only clear juice or broth, popsicles, tea and jelly could be had during that day. I made strawberry JELL-O for breakfast and lime JELL-O for supper. We also had tea with a friend in between meal times. Our friend gave us good advice to buy toilet paper. Mmm, yeah, not a bad idea. Two bottles of purge would eliminate any remnants of that good supper. But before the final purge, Jonas had two important things to achieve: finish MegaMan 7 and have a toke. I believe both objectives were achieved, although this weed virgin here had the room spinning around when she partook and ended up explosively barfing pizza on our pre-surgery patient. When cleaning her own puke revolted her stomach over and over again, Jonas voluntarily took over the cleaning duty at the risk of losing lunch himself (mainly, hmm, JELL-O). Good spirits I told you, good spirits is always the natural state for Jonas.

The morning of the surgery was much more low-key than that. Jonas found the previous night 'entertaining' , as he put it, and so was in a rather good mood. Clean, shaven and weighing 86.6 kg, he was taken to his surgeon at 7:45 am for a three-field oesophagectomy and radical lymphadectomy. That procedure lasting about 8 hours seeks to remove lymph nodes in the thorax and the neck as a preventive measure and to remove 85% of the oesophagus and 40% of the stomach. The stomach is then pulled up along with some small intestine to give more tubage. The result is a tubular stomach higher up in the thorax instead of a pouch-like organ. You can see his surgery as exhibit "B" in the following picture. It shows a 'before and after' drawing of the surgery and the three-field cuts the patient undergoes (a cut to the neck, a cut to the side and one below the plexus.) It is quite a major procedure, as you can imagine.

*This picture is from: http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/cgi/content/full/4/2/95

I will update after Jonas wakes up later today.

Rose