The Nightmare Continues...There may be a Shining Light at the End, however...

On Wednesday, August 9, one of the G.I. specialists who's been tracking my son's problem called me at work to say that she and the doctor who performed the initial laparascopic surgery back on July 7 (which seems like a million light years from now) were going to meet with my son on Thursday at noon in his room to discuss what's been going on and what options were available to him. Oh, how things change so suddenly when "the patient" has become an adult. She outlined what they were planning to do do and said the final decision was up to my son. No problem. Son, father and I all were in agreement  for a more aggressive surgical approach to bring this nightmare to a close. The final ball to the decision landed in my son's court and he asked to do whatever it would take to escape from this hospital hell in which he's been incarcerated since his graduation from high school.

When I got this phone call at work (and had to rush outdoors to enable my cell phone to work) and received this message that someone was actually going to do something, I felt as if the weight of twenty 150 lb. anvils had been lifted from my upper back and neck region. This was all I wanted...someone to do something!! Finally, this past Friday, August 11, my son underwent a second surgery to fix what obviously wasn't taken care of the first time around back on July 7.

Once again, my husband and I made an early morning pilgrimage to San Francisco. His surgery was scheduled for 7:30 AM and we wanted to be there to send him off, wish him well, tell him everything was going to be okay. There's something in the parental makeup that deems it necessary that even when your child is oblivious to your presence during a procedure, you know that somewhere, deep down within, it's essential that your child knows you're there, on the sidelines, waiting...waiting...waiting. After he was taken away, we took ourselves down to the lobby to wait through the surgery and recovery time and at last, six hours later, at 1:30 PM we met up with him again back in his room.

This procedure was more involved than the last. This time, two doctors worked on him; one on the inside and one on the outside. The scar tissue which had been removed from his duodenum had reformed and had to be cut away once again. This time, a sealant was applied to each side to prevent future formation. A tube was inserted through the mouth, into the stomach and down through the duodenum the size of an adult's index finger; basically a probe to ensure that the path was clear all the way through. The outside surgery will result in a four to six inch vertical scar on the belly. A battle scar, to be sure.  That's okay; I've got one of those myself.  Once back in his hospital room, our young man was hooked up by tubes to so many things that it took me a while to sort them out. He was on an oxygen tube, delivering 2 liters. An I.V. of simple saline was running into his PICC line. Another I.V. hooked up to a self-dosing pain medication machine was attached to the top of his hand. The much feared. detested nasogastric tube was threaded back through one nostril into his stomach and a feeding tube was threaded into the other. When I talked to my husband this morning, I learned that a catheter had been put into place because he wasn't voiding. Other than the N.G. tube, this was something he feared the most and I sure hope he was off and away on a cloud of strong pain medication when they introduced this awful thing. Catherization is bad enough for a female; I can't imagine it being done to a male, especially a young 18 year old!

I had to go to work this weekend. I was scheduled to do so and was very lucky to have gotten Friday as my scheduled day off. My department director has been most sympathetic and accommodating throughout all this time in juggling around my work days to give me time to attend to personal problems. My husband is always off on weekends and went down by himself to the city to visit our boy. He will once again spend the night at his brother-in-law's and be there for our son on Sunday and return home to me on Sunday evening. I have used up all but about 7 hours of sick time. Likewise vacation hours. My vacation time (as well as my husband's) has been used up this year making trips to doctors and hospitals. In the past five weeks, we've been to San Francisco about 7 or 8 times, All we've seen are hospital rooms, E.R. rooms, lobbies, hospital cafeterias and the medical center parking garage adjacent to the California Pacific Medical Center.

The current plan now is that if all goes well, our son will be released to home in a week. That would bring his total hospital stay to 21 days at the facility where he's been staying. Add seven days he spent prior to his ambulance transfer from the hospital closer to us to this place and that makes 28 days--four weeks--one month. Not much of a summer for a young man who just graduated from high school and turned 18, is it?  And that doesn't even include the two hospitals stays before this.  What a summer.  This will go down as one none of us will ever forget.