We haven't had to talk much about the Young Daughter's medical condition lately, because, well, there hasn't been a whole lot to talk about. It's been a pretty quiet period.
We've seen little signs of this and that over the past few weeks, oddly timed with a previously scheduled sleep-deprived EEG that she'll endure today. The whole thing struck her as pretty cool, last night; she got to stay up until 12:30 a.m. doing basically whatever she wanted (and what she wanted was to click around on Webkinz until we finally said it was time for bed. The little detail we left out was that the alarm clock was gonna ring at 5:30.
Trepidation always accompanies these not-so-routine routine physician visits. My biggest fear is that they find nothing. I'm strongly of the belief that it's better to know what's going on, whatever it is.
But, no time to think about all that right now. My duty: Keep the kid awake in the car for an hour-or-so ride through traffic. That should be fun.
Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Whew
Good news: Doctors say they got it all, and no bad drugs or nuclear options are necessary. All indications are a full recovery lies ahead.
It doesn't get any better than that. A big thank you is due to the medical professionals who made it happen, and to St. Stepmom, who once again is the rock on which my dad and all her family lean.
It doesn't get any better than that. A big thank you is due to the medical professionals who made it happen, and to St. Stepmom, who once again is the rock on which my dad and all her family lean.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Update No. 1: Week 2
RALEIGH, N.C. -- I just spent probably two full minutes trying to put a title up there. That's a good sign that you should just hit the tab key and start writing. So I will.
It's been two weeks of bullshit and bliss, two weeks of heart-warming and heart-pounding. Two weeks of wonder and two weeks of fear.
Each week was highly emotionally charged, for completely different reasons. At some point soon, I'll write about each.
I'm going to write about them in reverse, and separately.
The thing which I kind of glossed over earlier for Week 2 was this:
My father was diagnosed with colon cancer. He had surgery Aug. 2.
Right now, all is as well as it can be. The upsides are that he's relatively young (57) and it was found relatively earlier. The downside is that he's profoundly disabled as a result of a 1987 car accident, and that adds a serious level of complication to, well, everything. Oddly, even that has an upside; because of his disability, they were able to remove more of the parts that might be cancerous because they didn't have to worry about his future mobility; to put it simply, they could safely remove more of him and leave more of him disassembled 'cause he wasn't using it anyway. Or something like that.
We await results of testing to determine whether the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes. Those results were supposed to be available Monday. We're still waiting.
The rest of the family is waiting back in Anytown; The Wife and our kids wait in Florida, and I wait in North Carolina this week and Iowa next week.
The Wife, the Mini-Humans and I arrived home from Colorado in the single-digit hours of July 31. In the single-digit hours of Aug. 1, we had deposited the kids with a friend and were on another plane to Missouri. I've driven nearly 2,000 miles in the last 20 days, none of which were in my car.
I don't know how everything is going to turn out, but I have no reason to believe it'll be anything other than OK. We're survivors; my dad and his brothers have cheated death in some highly creative and stunning ways, and my dad's parents lived way longer than any actuarial tables would have expected them to. So we wait, and try to keep the worry to a minimum as things move on.
But I can tell you this: I've never wanted to go home more than I do right at this very second. Never.
I'll go back and write that head now, and do Week 1 later. Something tells me I should be sleeping now.
It's been two weeks of bullshit and bliss, two weeks of heart-warming and heart-pounding. Two weeks of wonder and two weeks of fear.
Each week was highly emotionally charged, for completely different reasons. At some point soon, I'll write about each.
I'm going to write about them in reverse, and separately.
The thing which I kind of glossed over earlier for Week 2 was this:
My father was diagnosed with colon cancer. He had surgery Aug. 2.
Right now, all is as well as it can be. The upsides are that he's relatively young (57) and it was found relatively earlier. The downside is that he's profoundly disabled as a result of a 1987 car accident, and that adds a serious level of complication to, well, everything. Oddly, even that has an upside; because of his disability, they were able to remove more of the parts that might be cancerous because they didn't have to worry about his future mobility; to put it simply, they could safely remove more of him and leave more of him disassembled 'cause he wasn't using it anyway. Or something like that.
We await results of testing to determine whether the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes. Those results were supposed to be available Monday. We're still waiting.
The rest of the family is waiting back in Anytown; The Wife and our kids wait in Florida, and I wait in North Carolina this week and Iowa next week.
The Wife, the Mini-Humans and I arrived home from Colorado in the single-digit hours of July 31. In the single-digit hours of Aug. 1, we had deposited the kids with a friend and were on another plane to Missouri. I've driven nearly 2,000 miles in the last 20 days, none of which were in my car.
I don't know how everything is going to turn out, but I have no reason to believe it'll be anything other than OK. We're survivors; my dad and his brothers have cheated death in some highly creative and stunning ways, and my dad's parents lived way longer than any actuarial tables would have expected them to. So we wait, and try to keep the worry to a minimum as things move on.
But I can tell you this: I've never wanted to go home more than I do right at this very second. Never.
I'll go back and write that head now, and do Week 1 later. Something tells me I should be sleeping now.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
The latest
The Wife was telling me a story the other night about one of her dogs throwing up.
The Young Daughter observes this mess and says something along the lines of, "She must not have taken her medicine. When I take my medicine, I don't get sick."
The Wife was quite surprised by this. We had no idea that The Young Daughter had drawn the connection between her medications and her episodes of the past few months, which were usually punctuated by vomiting unconnected to any real nausea or upset stomach or carsickness or any other condition that usually generates vomiting.
Among the medicines she's taking is Thalidomide, the drug immortalized as one of the memories of the '60s in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." (Third verse: "Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide.") Baby boomers remember that the drug was originally the miracle cure for morning sickness, with the unfortunate side effect of horrendous birth defects. The drug was taken off the market in the United States until 1998, when it was approved for heavily controlled clincal trials. There are those, including one of the doctors that we are seeing, who believe it might be effective in treating neurofibromatosis.
I, of course, am in favor of most things that might help. Research seems to indicate that only serious side effects of this particular treatment are in utero. The Young Daughter's 5; that's not a high risk. But that doesn't make us any less apprehensive about it.
In two weeks, The Wife and The Young Daughter are traveling to Birmingham, Ala., to meet with the man who literally wrote the book -- actually, several books -- on NF1. Will he have some answers? We don't know. But we'll keep asking the questions.
------
I am reminded of a story from May 2002 (click here and scroll down to May 10, 2002), back when I had no understanding of the realities of this situation and wanted said understanding even less.
The link to the press release in that post was active until fairly recently. It's been awful quiet out of Dr. Parada's office lately. He said "five years." He has one year and one month left to restore my faith in the medical profession. The clock is ticking.
The clock is ticking, goddammit. Find a way to fix this. Now.
The Young Daughter observes this mess and says something along the lines of, "She must not have taken her medicine. When I take my medicine, I don't get sick."
The Wife was quite surprised by this. We had no idea that The Young Daughter had drawn the connection between her medications and her episodes of the past few months, which were usually punctuated by vomiting unconnected to any real nausea or upset stomach or carsickness or any other condition that usually generates vomiting.
Among the medicines she's taking is Thalidomide, the drug immortalized as one of the memories of the '60s in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." (Third verse: "Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide.") Baby boomers remember that the drug was originally the miracle cure for morning sickness, with the unfortunate side effect of horrendous birth defects. The drug was taken off the market in the United States until 1998, when it was approved for heavily controlled clincal trials. There are those, including one of the doctors that we are seeing, who believe it might be effective in treating neurofibromatosis.
I, of course, am in favor of most things that might help. Research seems to indicate that only serious side effects of this particular treatment are in utero. The Young Daughter's 5; that's not a high risk. But that doesn't make us any less apprehensive about it.
In two weeks, The Wife and The Young Daughter are traveling to Birmingham, Ala., to meet with the man who literally wrote the book -- actually, several books -- on NF1. Will he have some answers? We don't know. But we'll keep asking the questions.
------
I am reminded of a story from May 2002 (click here and scroll down to May 10, 2002), back when I had no understanding of the realities of this situation and wanted said understanding even less.
The link to the press release in that post was active until fairly recently. It's been awful quiet out of Dr. Parada's office lately. He said "five years." He has one year and one month left to restore my faith in the medical profession. The clock is ticking.
The clock is ticking, goddammit. Find a way to fix this. Now.