A Mid-May Miracle

The week has been a blur.  I haven’t been keeping track of hours of daylight or hours of night.  I have been measuring time in traveling to and from the hospital in Omaha, and hours spent in the waiting room at the Creighton Medical Center.  It has been a terrible week, and it has been a miraculous week.

 

My 84 year old father was to undergo a 12-14 hour surgical procedure to remove a cancerous tumor from his head-it hadn’t reached his brain yet-and the periphery work involved with removing the tumor.  Now the word periphery doesn’t sound right, because those procedures took far longer than the removal of the tumor.

 

Dad had a team of world class surgeons, and I quickly learned that his treatment at Creighton was nothing short of superb.  He was wheeled into the operating room around 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, and every half hour a nurse kept us informed of any developments.  There were some complications in removing his tumor, and that 4-6 hour procedure turned into an 11 hour ordeal on Wednesday.  The plastic surgeon could have finished his portion of the surgery, but it would have meant keeping my dad under anesthesia for almost 20 hours, and he decided instead to finish the surgery on Thursday.

 

After a long Wednesday we were back at the hospital before 8:00 a.m. on Thursday.  His surgery began at 8:30 a.m., and again we were kept informed of progress every half hour.  Again the surgery took longer than expected.  It was not until 8:30 p.m. that dad was taken from the operating room to the intensive care unit.

 

For the surgeons, my dad’s procedure was something new.  84 year old men simply do not undergo surgery like this.  Although the doctors had everything well planned, there were several moments that required improvising and challenged their experience and talent. Fortunately they were up to the task.

 

With 23 hours of surgery in less than 36 hours, my dad needed every ounce of skill the surgeons possessed to merely survive his surgery.  He needed more than that though-he needed prayer, and he got it over and over, not just from family and friends and local church members, but from people around the world.  I mentioned my dad’s surgery on Twitter and the response was amazing.  Dozens of followers took notice and asked God to watch over Hank Meyer.  He answered their prayers.  My wife Jane said on Thursday that she truly believed my dad would not have survived this dangerous procedure without the prayers of so many, and I think she is right.  I thank each of you who said a prayer for him.  I will be forever grateful for your kind gesture.

 

The past three days have been almost as tough as waiting during the surgery.  Dad has been in the ICU the entire time, and the surgeons felt that they needed to slowly wake up my dad.  He did not wake up Friday, and on Saturday the only hint that he might be hearing us as we talked was an occasional movement of one of his feet.

 

This morning he blinked several times as we visited him in the ICU, but it wasn’t until this afternoon that he opened his eyes and kept them open for awhile.  He will gradually return to consciousness, and hopefully be out of the ICU in a few days. He still has a long hospital stay ahead of him, and his recovery will take quite some time.  I do believe he will recover and be able to do some of the things he did up until the last six months when his life was full of chemotherapy and surgery.

 

As I said, this has been a terrible week for us, but it is a miracle that my dad is still with us, and we are thankful for our miracle.  I know my dad’s surgery was far worse than spending hours and hours and hours in the surgery waiting room, but I hope I do not have to go through this again anytime soon.  Waiting room chairs certainly didn’t help my aching shoulder any, and neither did missing a rehab session, but watching my dad wake a little this afternoon was worth all the ache and stiffness I feel right now. I’m ready for a nap in my temporary bed/recliner though.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

~ by Ron Meyer on May 18, 2009.