What appears to be good news

My interpretation:

The surgery went very well. The doctors were overly impressed with the whole thing.

They went in through his back to the T-6/7 level and removed part of the tumor on the back side of his spinal cord. This went much easier than they expected. The doctors said it seemed to 'flake off', which is a great thing. The spine did not need any fusion (support by brackets / pins / etc.).

The mass on the front side of the spinal cord has shrank (I want to say considerably - but I don't want to be quoted on that yet) since its initial finding. The surgeons would like to talk about more radiation to see if that will continue to shrink. Of course, the doctors find this very intriguing considering this type of cancer has been labeled 'not treatable'.

I like to say my dad is a medical marvel. Everyone else says that his body does the opposite of what is to be expected (so that's where I get that from).

The whole process, from pre-op to post-op took about 4 hours. This is obviously much less time than we had originally been told. Originally the surgery was scheduled for 2 pm. But due to hold ups in the operation room, they didn't get started until almost 7:30pm. Therefore, dad was not back in his room until almost midnight.

They plan on having dad start physical therapy tomorrow, hopefully getting him up out of bed and mobile.

Please continue to keep your fingers crossed. Infection is our next biggest concern, especially since chemo and radiation knock your immune system down to next to nothing.