My wife Susan and daughter Erika waited for me in the family lounge on the ground floor. This room was located next to a convenient cafeteria, which served excellent soups and sandwiches as well as hot meals. The lounge was equipped with banks of computer screens that were connected both to the Internet and to the hospital surgical notification system. This system allowed the family members to track the progress of the surgery from the application of anesthesia to the first incision, to closing. Dr. Jaklitsch had indicated that the operation, including the chemotherapy wash, would take approximately six hours. But after this time came and went they received a telephone call from him indicating that, although all was well, some complications had arisen during surgery that had delayed progress.

The whole procedure took almost 8 ½ hours to complete due to the discovery that my pleural lining had attached itself quite firmly to the anterior (front) of my rib cage in the place where the biopsy incisions had been made. According to the post-operative report, this area required careful and patient surgery to strip off the pleura. An area near one of my biopsy incision points showed noticeable thickening and tissue samples from there were sent to the pathology lab. They turned out to be "hot", namely positive for tumor, requiring extra surgery to clean out the area and create a fresh margin where only untouched tissue remained.

The operation started with the removal of my sixth rib and then the removal of the pleura was begun. An incision was made which ran under my right breast, intersecting the uppermost biopsy scar and then all the way around my back, almost to the spine. The incision was nearly eighteen inches long. The remaining two biopsy scars were redone from the inside, to create a clean, tumor free margin. The pleural lining was burned or cut out, all the way to the gutter of the chest cavity, where the lung rested on the diaphragm. The diaphragm was also removed. The right bronchial branch was truncated and stapled and the lung was extracted through the hole in my chest. The lining of the heart, the pericardium, was dissected and the lower portion peeled away. Near the end of the surgical procedure, an antidote, Amifostine was given intravenously and about a half an hour later this was followed by placing 2 liters of 40-degree Celsius Cisplatinum solution at a concentration of 200mg per meter squared into the chest cavity and abdomen. This was circulated through the area for one hour, taking care to keep the solution hot.

After the chemotherapy wash was drained and flushed out, a synthetic patch made of Gore-Tex was fashioned for the heart and an artificial diaphragm was constructed of the same material and both were attached with absorbable sutures. An airtight chest drain, or catheter, was sewn into place between my ribs and the chest was closed. About 1000 cubic centimeters of air and fluid were then drained from the chest through the catheter. Following that I was placed on my side and taken to the Intensive Care Unit.