Mercy in Mayhem

I don't know what to title this story; it's still pretty new and hasn't yet reached its conclusion. I think there is still more lessons to learn, but I think I'll try to share this story and see what comes out in the end.

My daughter had a partial nephrectomy a few weeks ago. At the time of diagnosis, she was the mother of two boys, one of them recently weaned. She felt a lump on her side when she lay down; had felt it while pregnant with her youngest and thought that it was just something that got displaced. But it was still there a year after the baby and so she went to her doctor to have it checked out. It was her kidney and it had a growth. So off to a urologist she went. He ordered a CT scan and asked if she was pregnant; she didn't know for sure so he told her to take a pregnancy test before going in for the scan. The pregnancy test was positive. An unexpected third child was coming. First was the shock that she would be a mother again so soon and then the worry about the tumor. What now?

Since a CT scan was out of the question, an MRI without contrast was the next best thing but she was told that she couldn't do it until she was in the 2nd trimester which caused more wait and worry. The test result was indeed a tumor, not a cyst. With a complication of a pregnancy, she was sent to UCSF where the doctor told her she would be fine. It was in the best place if you had to have one of these and could easily be removed surgically. But she would have to wait until after the baby was born unless it started to grow rapidly. The bad news was that it was likely malignant.

So the tumor has been removed and she is recovering, needing the help of all her family with her brood of three children under the age of 5. It's been a stressful time mentally and physically; her body shows the effects of having part of a kidney removed; paleness, pain, weakness but getting stronger by the day.

During all this, I thought back to the story I heard growing up that before I was born my father had kidney surgery and almost lost his life in the 1930s. Then, there were no antibiotics. There was no laparoscopic procedure to minimize the scar tissue that would form from the huge incision of open surgery.... and he also had a general blood infection that raged through his body. This infection alone was a death sentence in the 1930s.

He had been working in the back yard of a home they just moved into, clearing the overgrown weeds. Ever the gardener, he wanted to plant his fruits, vegetables and gladiolas. He came back in with chigger bites on his legs. He said someone told him that motor oil would take care of the itching and he tried it. He believed that was how the infection started. From there, cysts formed on his kidney. They did the surgery anyway. Instead of using drain tubes like they do now after surgery, they packed the wound with dressing. His fever raged; he was in pain and every time they tried to change the packing in his wound, he would hemorrhage. His weight dropped to under 100 pounds. He was delirious but insisted that no one give him morphine except his wife. Mom was a nurse, and a mother with an infant. She faithfully dropped my sister off with a sitter and went to the hospital to give Dad his pain meds. She said there was no more muscle to inject into. Instead, she pulled up loose skin from his skeleton and injected the drug which left an obvious lump. Then she quietly went out of his room and wept.

My father said that when he was lucid and the doctors made their rounds, they spoke about his case openly in his presence; about how he was going to die; there was nothing else they could do. I'm sure he thought so too...that is until he said he woke up one morning and for the first time in a very long time his head was clear. The sun was shining and he could hear the birds singing. Something told him the doctors were wrong; he was going to live. Dad described in detail what he remembered about getting himself out of bed, extremely weak, hanging onto the furniture in the room, walking along holding himself up against the walls until he got to a phone. He called my mother and told her he wanted to come home. Whenever Dad made up his mind on something, there was no turning back. I can also imagine that he thought the doctors were fools and the only way he was going to recover was to go home.  He always hated hospitals with a vengeance.  The only time I remember him stepping into one was when Mom had a massive heart attack and was dying.  Mom said, "You know if they don't release you, they won't take you back." He said he understood.

So Mom called an ambulance to pick him up and bring him home. She thought he wanted to come home to die. After she got him into bed, he asked for something to eat, so she brought him some soup. That was the start of his recovery; a recovery that had doctors from all over shaking their heads that he pulled through. They would come to his house to check up on him and marvel to see him in his back yard planting his garden. He was their miracle patient.

I guess what I am seeing from all that we have experienced with Erin's surgery is that sometimes there is mercy in mayhem. I look at factors in my daughter's favor and thank God. I read that these tumors are usually not detected unless they do a scan for something else or when there are symptoms. But by then it's usually too late. The fact that she was thin enough and self aware enough to feel it. And also that she was concerned enough to get it checked out. There is the factor that getting a tumor in someone so young as she is rare. Then there is the factor of where the tumor grew on her kidney, and the factor that they got it out in time. She won't have the huge scar that would have circled around half of her waist since the doctor did it laparoscopicly. My father's scar was so sensitive all his life that he couldn't wear any garment with elastic.

I told her that her grandfather's blood runs in her veins. I like to think that his presence, perseverance and courage was with her the whole time. But I also marvel at the miracle and its ripple into the future. Without my dad's survival, my daughter and I wouldn't exist. He wasn't supposed to be able to father any more children, yet he did years later.  My survival is a small miracle in that my Mother got a second opinion when the first OB doctor diagnosed her with a uterine tumor and recommended a hysterectomy.  Perhaps there is something specific for us to accomplish while we are here. Maybe mine was to bring this wonderful woman into the world that I call  my daughter.  Whatever God has in store further down the road for us, I can't wait to find out how it turns out.