We didn't exactly celebrate Halloween in the traditional sense this year. Catastrophic Hurricane Sandy took care of that. But we haven't celebrated Halloween at all for the past 2 years...
For the first time in my 38 years of life, Halloween was postponed. Yes, you heard me right, postponed. Well, Halloween itself was not postponed, it has it's own birthday. But the Trick-or-Treating part was postponed until Saturday. That's ok with us. We prefer to trick-or-treat minus the rain gear!
This year however, the end of October 31st without any ER visits was enough celebration for me! The person visiting the ER and then checking in for a few days is probably not who you would expect. And it certainly wasn't from any needles in the candy (circa 1980's) OR big belly aches caused from an over consumption of Snicker bars! No this was something much different.
We don't talk about it much around here. We feel sincerely and overwhelming blessed that our "situation" turned out the way it did. And so I guess our silence about it is just a representation of moving on with life. We don't pretend that it never happened, although I'm sure my husband would prefer.
Two years ago, the day before Halloween, my husband was driving home from our camp when he called me, slightly confused. He said he was talking to a co-worker on his cell phone and was "forgetting basic words." He also complained that he was having excruciating head pains. Now my husband is one of the strongest men I know. He has the capacity to carry-on better than most. What I mean by this is that my husband is a hard worker, a start-to-finish kinda guy. No matter the goal, or the time frame to complete it, he gets the job done, always. Completely. Thoroughly. If it meant climbing a mountain with a 100 lb boulder on his back, with a broken ankle in the pouring rain, he'd get the job done, finished without ever so much as a sigh. It's in his blood. He is truly his father's son. He simply does not complain.
So when he called me to complain about a headache and forgetting words, I knew something was wrong.
At the time, he had our two older sons with him in the truck. I told him to pull over and I would meet him wherever he was. I didn't want to alarm him, although I'm sure he knew, by the sound of his symptoms, I was sure he was having a stroke. Did I mention how stubborn my husband is? He said he was feeling better and if he got worse he promised he would pull over and call me. At this point I was angry with him. Both for ignoring those tall-tale symptoms of something seriously wrong with his body and for what I felt was his putting our kids lives in jeopardy by continuing to drive... We would argue this point today if I brought it up, so I don't. But they returned safely (thank God) and my husband looked truly awful. We immediately went to the ER.
I have to preface this by saying the hospital closest to our home is my LEAST favorite hospital in all the world. Yes, that bad. But in our state of frenzy and for the billboards around town that say they are the BEST hospital in town for Neurology, I grudgingly headed in that direction. When we got there and were finally seen, my husband's blood pressure was a sickening 220/126. Sickening. They didn't skip a beat (excuse the pun) in getting him back to a room. CAT scans, blood tests and hours later we were transferred to another hospital (due to our insurance carrier). About 30 hours later (and with minutes to spare for Trick-or-Treating) we were released, stroke free, to home. We left the hospital with a dual diagnosis of "migraine" and "spinal stenosis." I could write a book about crappy hospitals and healthcare providers during these 30 hours, but it wouldn't change the diagnosis my husband received 1 year later having NOTHING to do with migraines OR stenosis!
Fast forward one year and we are back in the ER minutes before Trick-or-Treating. Same headache symptoms. Although these were not the headaches you and I may suffer. These were paralyzing, base-of-the-neck pains that at one point sent my husband into convulsions (something I have tried to forget). There is nothing worse than seeing someone you love, in severe pain ----and being able to do absolutely nothing to help... I'm serious when I tell you I could write a book, again, about what happened to us over the next ten days and then the 4 months following, until his surgery. Only this time the book would not only include crappy healthcare, crappy healthcare providers, crappy hospitals and more wrong diagnosis... but it would have a longer list of CARING health providers that properly diagnosed my husband and sent us on our way to recovery. It would also list family, friends, neighbors and strangers who prayed for my husband's health. Not to mention the outpouring of unselfish acts of so many helping our family through a difficult process. One such moment was the climax of this saga. On December 31, 2012, when again, I believed my husband was having a stroke...only this time, it was much, much worse. I will spare the details out of respect for my husband's privacy... but my two neighbors, who were surely enjoying a celebatory night of friends, food and drink, left their party to sit with my children while my husband was taken away by ambulance. One of our dear neighbor and friends even climbed into bed with our four year-old daughter so that she would not be scared when they took her dad away in a stretcher. Not the type of holiday memories to hold dear.
On February 13, 2012 my husband had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his kidney. It was a little bugger, but it caused a mountain of problems, including the crippling head pains, stomach problems and the elevated blood pressures. The surgeon who removed the tumor took the time to discuss everything with us patiently and kindly. He even gave us his home phone number! Just incase we had any questions in the middle of the night... what MD does that??!! We had amazing doctors in the hospital where the surgery took place. And in the other hospital we had outstanding nursing care, which is unheard of these days. (And just so I don't have an angry mob of nurses showing up on my doorstep, I am not trashing nurses. As a matter-of-fact I'm an RN myself. Most nurses are overworked and underpayed not to mention under appreciated...the others are old and bitter and need to retire.)
No chemo. No radiation. Six months of physical and mental healing with a 1% chance of recurrence was the prognosis we were sent home with. At six months the CAT scan was tumor free (hooray!). We are approaching the one year anniversary. I can almost guarantee their will be no celebatory parties or anything of the sort (only many prayers of thanks to the good Lord.) My husband insists that he can not call himself a cancer "sufferer" since he says he didn't suffer the same as others with cancer do. Part of this is true. After diagnosis and surgery we had an easier job of recovery than most. But nothing is easy about watching your loved one suffer, even if it's only for a short time. And he is a survivor in so many ways....even if he doesn't think so.
This year Halloween turned out to be a BIG treat! Which I'll take over those last two "Tricky" ones.
Happy Halloween and good health to all of you!
Jody
Oh, and maybe a little bit of irony in the orange ribbon representing kidney cancer?? In October??
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