Just a month ago, he celebrated his 14th birthday and his first jittery year of high school was approaching. Big stuff in it's own right. Two weeks later he was in ICU with a tumor discovered in the back of his head, taking up a third of the space. Shocking, scary and large. "Bigger than him" is what I thought, a terrible thought - one that scared me but it came through anyway.
The previous blog showed him the day before his marathon neuro surgery, just after they had put a drain in his head to relieve the pressure of the spinal fluid that was not draining through the ventricles. Pretty brave smile considering......Three weeks and three surgeries later he's about to make the move toward rehab.
The numbers are easier to absorb now,15+ hours of surgery, 3 neuro-surgeons in the same O.R., 2 vascular surgeons, 2 anesthetists, 75 units of fluids in the initial surgery, I'm just thankful he's alive, it was the most harrowing experience I've gone through as a parent. He has a road map criss-crossing his head now, but it should look fine when the hair grows in.
Meningioma and choroid plexus tumors are now part of the vocabulary, ventricles and shunts, drains too. Folical bacteria barriers, biopsies, concepts that were of no concern to me before, now are of prime importance.
BUT.......... he is doing well. His cognition is as sharp as ever it seems. Language skills are the same thank god and his sense of humor is the same as it was before. We got him to laugh about an old incident when his pet rat bit me and he smiled when I called him a ladies man for getting a hug out of his nurse at the end of her shift the other morning.
It's going to be a long road back, that is what I'm surest of in a sea of uncertainty.
2 comments:
Healing thoughts for your son and your family.
Gaz, touching. Being the father of two, i can't imagine what that would be like. I wish for the best for you both.
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