A medical 2x4
Bridget Jones was right: when one part of your life comes together, another inevitably falls spectacularly to shit.
Late Saturday night, my uncle started having major seizures, including one that was more than an hour long. He was taken to the ICU at an OKC hospital and is still there on a ventilator. He's been showing small improvements, including relying less and less on the ventilator and responding to his name, but it's still not looking too hot. As an extra kick in the pants, an MRI done Sunday shows that another tumor's growing in the middle of his brain. The doctors are about 85 percent sure its cancer, but can't crack open his head to confirm because (a) he's too weak for the anesthesia and (b) the location of the tumor. So until they get him stable and out of ICU, any kind of cancer treatment is off of the table.
My dad's spent the better part of the week at the hospital, including crashing in his brother's room a couple of nights. Because harvest started Monday, my brother's been out with the grandparents since Sunday night, getting crash courses on how to drive stick and how to operate a combine, filling in for our cousin who's been camped out in the ICU waiting room since early Sunday. (As of last night, he hasn't dropped the combine's transmission or plowed over anything he wasn't supposed to, which is a positive.)
As an added bonus, my grandmother on the other side is having a pacemaker installed this morning. The only reason that's got me on edge is because she's 75. Seems a bit...tame (for lack of a better word) compared to the medical drama on my dad's side, but it's still enough that my mother and stepfather are camped out in Oklahoma City at that hospital (different from the one my uncle's at) to be there by my grandfather's side today.
So right now, it's the waiting game. And the waiting game sucks.
Late Saturday night, my uncle started having major seizures, including one that was more than an hour long. He was taken to the ICU at an OKC hospital and is still there on a ventilator. He's been showing small improvements, including relying less and less on the ventilator and responding to his name, but it's still not looking too hot. As an extra kick in the pants, an MRI done Sunday shows that another tumor's growing in the middle of his brain. The doctors are about 85 percent sure its cancer, but can't crack open his head to confirm because (a) he's too weak for the anesthesia and (b) the location of the tumor. So until they get him stable and out of ICU, any kind of cancer treatment is off of the table.
My dad's spent the better part of the week at the hospital, including crashing in his brother's room a couple of nights. Because harvest started Monday, my brother's been out with the grandparents since Sunday night, getting crash courses on how to drive stick and how to operate a combine, filling in for our cousin who's been camped out in the ICU waiting room since early Sunday. (As of last night, he hasn't dropped the combine's transmission or plowed over anything he wasn't supposed to, which is a positive.)
As an added bonus, my grandmother on the other side is having a pacemaker installed this morning. The only reason that's got me on edge is because she's 75. Seems a bit...tame (for lack of a better word) compared to the medical drama on my dad's side, but it's still enough that my mother and stepfather are camped out in Oklahoma City at that hospital (different from the one my uncle's at) to be there by my grandfather's side today.
So right now, it's the waiting game. And the waiting game sucks.