Successful surgery.

We just talked to the surgeon; Dad is out of surgery in a few hours less than anticipated.  He was supposed to be in the operating room anywhere from 3-4.5 hours, and he was out in a little over two hours.  This worried us at first when we received a call to talk to the surgeon after such a short amount of time had gone by.  Apparently the procedure went more quickly than Dr. Rowe had originally thought because of the "non-symmetrical" placement of dad's renal arteries on the aorta (thank God for our imperfections).  Because the arteries that go from the aorta to the kidneys were slightly off-centered, he didn't have to cut off the blood to his right kidney (he was able to clamp his aorta at an angle just below where the artery branched to the right).  Dr. Rowe cut off the left kidney's blood supply for only 20 minutes while he sewed up other arteries feeding and leaving the aorta, and fed it cold saline throughout, in an effort to avoid potential renal shutdown and future dialysis.  Both kidneys are apparently working well right now and we can see dad in an hour and a half or so.  As for the aneurysm that was removed from the artery, everything went as planned, and now dad has an extension of synthetic artery in place of a segment of his aorta.  In the picture to the left is a piece of the new aorta that is now inside dad's chest.  His recovery time will include 5-10 days in the hospital, followed by probably six weeks of lying on his back watching episodes of Seinfeld, M*A*S*H* and The Three Stooges, while reading Tom Clancy novels.  But at this point it doesn't appear that dialysis will be necessary and we are very thankful for that.  Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers!