catheters


of all the years in my life, i don't have gratuitous amounts of memories from any. there are reasons for this. and then are reasons for this. for whatever reason, though, the way that i see myself looking back is like staring deeply at a 1000 piece puzzle of an ocean, only 900 pieces are missing. i have enough of it to cobble together the "big picture", but the facts of the matter are so few and far between that i am left with a great bit of grey area to fill in the blanks in other ways. pictures. stories. songs. family. now facebook. i'd like to think, looking backwards, that the way i represent my history is mostly accurate, but i would be more of a liar than i already am if i said there wasn't a good bit of revisioning in the process. for better or worse, leading up to june 2009, what you got of me was a fragmented understanding of my former self with a bent towards growing up to being a better husband, father and friend. that's it.

maybe this is how it has always worked. with everybody. but the last six months, i have a feeling, may singe their way into my own long-range planning unlike any six month span of my so called life.

"what you are looking at here is your left kidney. this is what a normal sized kidney looks like."

<nods, approves>

"this is not."

<oh, ...shit>

one of the more vivid memories from my stay in the hospital was the morning after my first night. the friday following the surgery, sarah had gone home to get the girls ready for their day. amy had stopped in to see me on her (out of the) way home from work. a couple girls from jeff. st.'s nursing program came into my room. they asked me for permission to take out my catheter. nervously, i looked over at amy (a nurse, herself) and asked if i should think handing over to them my permission would be ok. she shrugged at me and said that it should be fine, and so i said "yes." the girls left the room for a minute and amy and i were able to talk about what was going to happen.

"don't worry", she said. "anybody can do it."

what???

well, ok.

the nurse-in-training and her supervisor came back into the room to do their thing. evidently, the process goes like this. deflate the balloon that's been forced up into your bladder, pull tube out. easy-bake oven easy as that. i guess the nurse-in-training handbook didn't mention that, if the patient has just had an organ pulled out of his belly-button area, she shouldn't use the patient's abdomen area for leverage. not that she was balancing her entire weight on me, but she pushed down just hard enough to make everything between my navel and what-felt-like my neck spasm. i groaned. the nurse jumped, sure that she had hurt me with whatever they were attempting to do "down there". she hadn't, but i was ready for them to finish and leave. now.

finish, they did. i think amy had left the room for them to do the deed. my memory goes grey at this point again. but, in that moment, i knew something major had happened to my body. what i didn't know was how long it would take me to get back to where i once was.

i am still waiting.

sure, i am perfect push-upping again. crunching. lifting. i can carry whatever whomever needs carried to their car. hell, i am even sleeping some now.

but i am not back to where i once was. maybe i never will be. and maybe that's the point.

kiker had some surgery a couple nights ago. scared me to death. even got his own catheter story that i can't wait to hear. what? is something wrong with that?

the latter half of this year has been a rough one. rough enough that i think i am going to remember an awful lot of it. and i am not sure that's a good thing.

to be continued...

hannah and caroline and my sick one kidney


well, it's been a heavy month, yeah? at the beginning of july, i was on antibiotics for what my primary care physician coined a "really bad infection". two days after beginning the antibiotic, the only symptom that has presented itself throughout this entire endeavor began to clear up...only to come back a few days later.

and then the trip to see a urologist, dr. wade. i was with him for less than an hour, but the news he shared with me would change my outlook on life, if not my actual life, forever. a mass, now confirmed to be malignant, was found growing inside my right kidney.

whoa.

three weeks later, i find my way to the hospital to have the kidney removed. a day later, i receive the best news possible, that the tumor is completely contained and isolated in the kidney, the cancerous cells having not even moved into the margins of the affected organ. the doctor tells us to "celebrate" the good news. we take a deep breath. we move on to recovering from the surgery, itself.

the last week has been a trying one. i have never experienced consistent pain like i have over the last seven days. i went without pain medication for the first time last night. my staples have been removed. i am still a week away from driving, probably over two from returning full time to work. i am not very good at just sitting around. my mind goes to too many dark places.

i am ready to get out of the house again. ready to spend some time with friends again. ready to play softball again (even though that's several weeks off). that being said, this week has been a unique one at home. sarah and i don't have a whole lot of time to ourselves anymore. and even though she's been playing the role of nurse, it's been good to have the time.

it's kind of sad that this weekend will mark the beginning of a return to our new normal. i won't have my first follow-up scan for three months. after recovering from surgery, it will be back to business as usual for a while. by time for my next panic attack, hannah will have started kindergarten. wow. my big girl. caroline, hopefully, will be just a little less "terrible" as she turns two. i'll eventually get back on the field. we'll be getting ready for advent and a trip to georgia for some turkey and dressing. kinda weird. life marches on. i guess it's time to get back on the train and stop feeling sorry for myself.

i hope things will be less heavy here. HACAM hasn't been a whole lot of fun over the last month. and i hate that. this is one of my truly enjoyable escapes, and i want to get back to talking some about the braves that are trying to maintain my interest and the beginning of the college football season being close enough to taste at this point.

let's face it, though. my life and this blog has now seen it's "game-changer". here's hoping that i can incorporate my and our new normal into what used to be a lot of fun around here before the kidney thing went down. there are too many good and relevant things going on in my life that will affect my girls' lives not to make note of them, right?

no more whammies.

hannah and caroline and my sick kidney
(part three)


short and sweet this time around. my day-before-surgery "preparation" will call me back to the bathroom soon.

i am feeling ok about things this afternoon, and i thought it might be worth my time to document that. i worry. that's what i do. i can't claim that all of the fears that have ravaged my imagination and led to night after night of bad sleep are no longer there.

but fear is such a silly thing anyway, isn't it? the way that it manifests itself to me is probably different than you. and that's natural, of course. more than anything else in the last three weeks, i've been reminded at how immature my faith still is. how, in spite of immersing myself in the bible and church and god for the last ten-plus years, i could not have felt and feel more inadequate or unqualified at the thought of having served as a spokesman for god for the last however many years. people should listen to me, why? i probably know more bible trivia than most of you. fantastic. that hasn't helped me at all the last three weeks.

the only thing that has helped has been grasping, with new understanding and enlightenment, that i am not in control. but that there are many, many people (probably most that i've never even met) praying for me. for my health. for my peace of mind. for a calmness. for my family. for my future. all on behalf of a god that i know loves me very much. what a gift. what a gift that i will never be able to pay back. pretty overwhelming.

my surgery will be at 7:00 tomorrow morning. i know you will be there with me.

talk to you soon.

good-bye, right kidney. we had a good run. i am sorry you decided you'd be better off serving as fertile ground for some silly mass/tumor/whatever it ends up being. where did that get you? homeless, that's where. homeless and alone.

i am glad i am not alone.