A change of plans...

If I were a psychiatrist trying to figure out what makes me tick, I might ask me why in the midst of the drama connected with our son and his deteriorating health, I am writing about garbage disposals falling out, mistakes I have made while preparing tapioca pudding, and pickling green tomatoes. There are several possibilities, but the fact is that life does go on. The sun comes up, we get out of bed and put one foot forward, and move through the day, and other things happen that we have to think about besides the problems with our son.

The general surgeon who removed the baseball size mass in our son’s armpit a few months ago appears to be a very good surgeon. This I was told today by a man who came to visit our boy. His brother is an anesthesiologist at the hospital and works with our surgeon regularly, and he is highly regarded.

Our guy may very well be a good surgeon, but I am rather angry at him at the moment because he will insist on adding his voice to the choir of other physicians who are taking care of our son as they sing their old favorite…

“There Is No Hope For Your Son….”

He did it again this morning, when he was discussing with us the reason why the operation that was supposed to begin at about 7:30 to remove the baseball in Nate’s abdomen was going be temporarily postponed, if not canceled outright.

You understand, he said, that this is palliative. All this will do is buy him some more time.
Of course, I want to scream at him. Of course I understand. But I don’t want to hear it.

I did not want the surgery to be postponed. Every day that the operation is delayed gives the mass in his abdomen one more day to grow and become harder to remove – if indeed it can be removed at all at this point.

Our son’s ability to breathe began to deteriorate the day after he saw the surgeon last week to schedule the operation. And this morning, the surgeon, with his impeccable logic, explained to our son that his lung function was so bad that if he was having trouble breathing now – his right lung was not moving any air at all – he certainly would have far more trouble after the operation and he might not even survive the operation.

So, instead of the operation, he was admitted to the floor and went for a CT scan to see if they could figure out a reason why all this fluid had collected in the pleural space between his lungs and the ribs, and a thoracic specialist stuck a needle in there and drained out more than a liter of fluid... and then they put in a chest tube…. and

And tomorrow will be a new day and I have no idea what is going to happen…. 
Except the sun is going to come up....
and I will get out of bed...
and put one foot forward….