Pam's story: part 3 and an update

...the phone rang....

It was the neurologist, Dr. Bowman. He informed me that David had a brain tumor and we needed to get to the ER immediately. I called the ambulance, got David ready (grabbed that hotdog he was about to eat), and called my daughters, Lydia and Hannah.

Dr. Bowman was waiting for us when we arrived in the ER at Wake Med. David was given an ER bed and prepped as if for surgery. We really thought that he would be going into surgery that night. Lydia and Hannah arrived with friends from their churches and began to make phone calls for me. They called our son, Philip, who lives in Florida as well as talked to my siblings who are in Georgia. From what I could understand from the neurologist and neurosurgeon, David was close to death and things did not look hopeful.

After a couple of hours in the ER, David was moved up to the neurosurgical intensive care ward. We still thought surgery would take place that night. Family and friends kept arriving to pray and support us. Philip and his family began the long all-night drive up from Orlando area. My brother and sister and their spouses packed to come and be with me from Georgia.

While I was visiting David in the ICU, Lydia and Hannah came in and noticed the nurse offering David a meal. Lydia immediately confronted the nurse, asking why he was being given food if he was going into surgery. The nurse could not tell us much, or didn't want to, but she did let us know that David would not be going into surgery that night. We were very confused. Here, we had been led to believe that David would die without this surgery and now they were telling us that he was not having the surgery. We did know that David has been put on anti-seizure meds as well as steroids to reduce swelling in his brain. Otherwise, we were very confused because we were being told so many different things. The conclusion we finally came to at that time was that the surgeon thought that surgery wouldn't do any good.

Now we know otherwise! We have been told since the surgery (that took place two days later), that if surgery had been performed that night, it would have killed David. The swelling was so bad, that one cut would have caused an aneurism or brain bleed. It would have been fatal. Praise the Lord that the surgeon knew this and took the time to really look over the MRI results and study the tumor. Praise the Lord that the steroids worked to reduce the swelling enough that surgery WAS possible two days later.

And now we continue with research and recovery. David is doing well after two weeks of radiation and two months of on and off chemo. He is really starting to feel fatigued and we are limiting our time with groups of people as his immune system is really poor. We have to be so careful of what he is exposed to, we have even posted a warning notice on our front door.

Yesterday, we had Lydia's family over for lunch. Guess what we had?

Hotdogs!