"A Happy Day!"

          Quick update -- because we just got an update from her doctor. At about 1:30 the information desk found us and they said they were closing her up. Dad and I stared at each other and said "ummmmm....no?" We figured that they meant the lead surgeon was starting the reconstruction and graft. 

          But...they went in, and everything actually looked pretty clean. They took 2cm in every direction from the tumor site. After inspecting the site for where it could have possibly drained, it actually looked like it didn't really drain anywhere. Because of this, there didn't seem to be a reason to take any lymph nodes (and there weren't any sentinel lymph nodes identified in the test earlier). 

          And because everything looked pretty clean, that was all the tissue they took: no skin flap and no skin graft. She will have a wave-like scar on her face (they pulled skin from her ear over), but the scar should blend in with her laugh lines and other facial contours. 

          This is literally the best it could have gone at this point (in fact, we didn't even know this was really an option). Because there is no skin flap or graft involved, her hospital stay should be about 2 days. 

           We still aren't confident in staging. They need to look at the pathology from the margins to figure out the exact tumor size, and they never could detect any sentinel lymph nodes. But at this point everything looks as good as it can be. Radiation should start in 6 weeks (still about 5-6 weeks of radiation on her face and neck to get the lymph node beds--that part doesn't change). 

          Thank you for all of the good thoughts. I'm sure she is going to be psyched with this result at this point.