The Longest Day (and longest post?)

It's a Friday evening in September, and under normal circumstances we would be somewhere in the vicinity of John Carlisle Stadium either helping serve the best chili dogs in the Upstate or cheering on the football Eagles. Tonight is different.

Yesterday began like almost every other school day... racing around to get ready then dropping off kids at school. But it ended way too many hours later, having been filled with more ups and downs than the average family experiences in a week, let alone one 24-hour day. Rather than a running narrative that would be so long it would probably invoke some sort of google-blogger overload warning, I'll just highlight some of the day's events.

• Smooth drive to Duke for postop visist with surgeon (light traffic on a beautiful, sunny day).
• Yummy food and engaging lunch conversation with Cay, Holly, and Riley.
• Reunion with two of the "Waiting Room Posse" (Steve & Judy were present to support and pray for us while we spoke to the surgeon).
• Great news from pathology report that all cancer was contained within the prostate gland and no malignancy present in any of the other specimens (bladder, seminal vesicles, lymph tissues)!! This is the news we were praying for, and now we start a routine schedule of PSA tests to confirm the surgical/pathological findings. We'll be looking for a big, fat goose egg of ZERO at each PSA.
  
• Negative cystogram (basically a dye-contrasted x-ray of the bladder) to show no leakage of fluid before removing the catheter.
• A "stuck" catheter -- the first hurdle of the day. No logical explanation from the surgeon (as in "This never happens") and really nothing that can be done except start practicing patience. In Charlie's words, "It is what it is." A disappointment, but nothing that blurs the big picture.
• Smooth return trip to Greenville, including a rare treat of a snack from KFC (we so seldom have fried foods now, our stomachs almost didn't know how to take it in!).
• Launch of the stream of phone calls from other parents watching Cole's C-team football game to let us know he may have been injured. Escalation of the messages being relayed, followed by a prayer-filled dash downtown to meet an ambulance at Children's Emergency Room.

This wasn't Cole's first head injury, so I was thinking I was prepared for what his condition would be when they got him in for evaluation. After he was settled into an exam room, an attendant escorted me back to him, but it turns out I wasn't prepared at all. The otherwise athletic figure lying listlessly on the bed with dirt smudges across his cheeks looked like Cole, but his lack of response was almost chilling. I immediately reached for his hand, and leaned down to kiss his forehead. I whispered an I-love-you greeting, and asked him if he knew who I was. His negative head shake evoked in me a gut-check reaction so different from the Hallelujah-negative we had welcomed in the doctor's office just a few hours prior. His brain just wasn't clicking at all. He didn't recognize familiar words, and asked "What's _____?" to almost every statement. Some of the questions he asked during those first few hours were, "Do I have any friends?", "Do I have a cool name?", "Do I have siblings?" (to which I joked that he was such a smart boy to know what a sibling is, to which he replied, "What's a sibling?"). He later remembered his birthday being in October (the year being "eighteen-ninety-something"... only a century off!) and having a sister with the same birthday. The reassuring comments began to emerge when I told him he was being a very good patient, and he said, "Like Daddy." :)

The ER staff worked hard to rule out anything more serious than a routine concussion. They performed a head CT, x-rays of chest, C-spine, T-spine, and L-spine, blood work, EKG, and urine screen. All the tests were negative -- this time, the word we wanted to hear! But it took several hours for Cole to really start to be himself again. Finally, at nearly 4:00 a.m., he was deemed ready to be discharged with the expected precaution to not participate in any contact sport for 4 to 6 weeks. That topic has been passionately debated from both sides around here this afternoon, but age and wisdom will rule the day, and his 2010 football season is likely over.

While I was sitting bedside in the cramped little #5 exam room, coaches, parents, and at least one teammate were holding vigil for Cole in a nearby family waiting room. This was provided by the staff-family liaison who "just so happened" to be the mom of one of our former 1st graders, and as of a few months ago a neighbor just down the street. How does God manage to orchestrate details like this time after time? We began the flow of visitors into the room one by one as midnight was giving way to the wee morning hours, and one parent shared something that needs to be repeated.

Flash back to the stadium. As Cole's condition was quickly deteriorating on the sidelines, word spread up and down the bench, and his teammates became very concerned. The sweetest moment took place as the EMTs moved his stretcher toward the ambulance and the players crowded around calling out "We love you, Cole!" As the doors were shut, the players huddled up and spoke a quick prayer for their teammate before going back out on the field. Hearing that story meant so much to us.

One more quick detail, if you've hung in there with me this far. At some point along the way I got a semi-frantic phone call from Charlie at home telling me the catheter had just fallen out! Go figure. Why it wouldn't budge in the doctor's office and what suddenly caused it to give way is a mystery, but the good news is he's now free from the cath and ready to get moving around again! So both patients bouncing back and on the way to being good as new. Ahh, thank you, Lord.