The Cellar - Unpleasant Memories

I've been fairly quiet here the past few days. It seems that my 22 year old son, who has already not had the most auspicious year on record, was suddenly stricken by the failure of his 12-year-old ventriculo-peritoneal shunt, which prevents the benign brain tumor deep inside one of his ventricles from causing him to develop hydrocephalus.

He was complaining of headaches on Tuesday all day, and so I took him to the ER Tuesday night at about 8:30. We were there until 1:30 AM Wednesday, and left for home in a blinding snowstorm, our first really nasty winter weather this season. He was CAT scanned at that time, and given some pain medication.

Wednesday was spent with me back at work on 3 hours of sleep for a nine hour desk shift, while my ex (his mother) ran down past images from three different sources so that comparisons with the ER scans could be made. We met at the neurosurgeon's office, where the doctor quickly noted enlargement in his ventricles as compared to an MRI done in July. This could only mean one thing, and so Steve was scheduled for evening surgery on Thursday to do a shunt revision.

The surgery didn't actually start until 12:00 AM this morning, Friday, and I didn't hit bed (or rather, couch, as I didn't want to get in my comfy bed...I'd have never been able to get out of it) until 3:30 AM, again going to work at my usual 8:00 AM time. At 1:00, I got a phone call from my wife, who had gone to visit him, telling me that he had experienced a grand mal seizure, and he was uncommunicative. I zipped to the hospital, and found him somewhat improved, although still not terribly whippy. At this writing, he is badly nauseated, and cannot keep anything down. His head hurts (to be expected), and the pain meds and anti-nausea drugs are keeping him rather whacked. Prognosis at present is unknown, although he was able to speak in complete sentences before I left to come home, leaving his mother to spend the night with him in his room. I take the shift tomorrow afternoon and will stay on into Sunday AM.

Although I can only begin to imagine the fear my son must be experiencing, all of this is also terribly difficult for me. 12 years ago, I almost lost my then ten-year-old son due to complications from his original shunt installation. The closed head brain injury he suffered robbed him of his short term memory, his high IQ, much of his verbal skill and vocal control, leaving him today, at age 22, a marginally employed busboy with a seizure disorder whose major source of income is Social Security Disability. He is in hosptial only thanks to Missouri Medicaid.

The experiences of 1991/1992 are still very fresh in my mind. It was the most horrific period of my entire life, wherein my whole life came unravelled. My son nearly died, and was hospitalized in largely paralyzed condition for a total of 10 months. During that time, my wife left me, my finances were shattered, and I spent the biggest part of a year either working or sitting by my child's bedside in one of four different hospitals (one of which was a four hour drive from our home). It was a time when I seriously considered suicide, but chose abject alcoholism instead. It was a time of panic attacks, severe self doubt, and alternating pejorations of the deities with earnest prayer and sincere offers to the Fates to allow me to trade places with my child. I literally offered up my soul to any entity that would accept it in exchange for his survival and recovery.

The events of the past few days are dredging up old memories, old feelings, old fears. I can only hope that the supportive wife I am now fortunate to have, and the lessons learned over a decade ago, will carry me through this. I can only hope that my son walks from the hospital with at least the major part of what he walked in with still accessible and functional in his brain and personality. I hope I still have the strength to be there for him, to make sure the doctors and nurses communicate effectively, and that they don't try to give him the wrong drugs at the wrong times, etc, etc, as they tried to do many times during his original episode. I can only hope, and ask my gods and goddesses to smile down upon him.

It is going to snow again tonight, silence falling from above, hushing the world, covering that which is brown and dead with a glorious mantle of shining white.

May blessings and strength fall this night upon my son and my family in equal abundance.

Here's a picture of my son...please send good vibes.