It’s not a tumor.

So I’ve been thinking that I should keep up more on this thing.  Part of my simply wanted to grab a composition notebook and make a point of writing at least 4 times a week about something…Anything.  And I still might do that.  It’ll help me remember things down the road.

But today is a bit different.  I’ve got one specific thing on my mind and I can’t seem to drop it.  I don’t like it.  At all.  As I write this down, my dad is currently in an operating room at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, CA.  I knew it was coming, but oddly I thought it was for something else.  He’s been in the hospital quite a bit this year having surgery on a leg he busted up when he dropped his motorcycle.  I guess, while there, they found some sort of tumor on his ear.  It didn’t sound too serious.  I talked to my mom about it yesterday and it just seemed like anything else.  Then I tried calling dad…No answer.  Not strange.  My brother was on his way to see him though at the hotel he’s staying at the night before he checked in.  I got the following picture sent to my cell phone by my brother…

My dad is a true mountain man.

I thought it was weird that he had all those electrodes all over his head for an ear surgery.  Then David (my brother) called.  We chatted a second then he passed the phone on to my dad.  They seemed to be having a nice time.  Then I asked what specifically he had going on.  The tumor isn’t in his ear.  It’s either in his brain stem or against his brain stem.  He’s not simply having a tumor removed…As we speak my dad is undergoing brain surgery.  And that freaks me out.

We talked about it lightly, I asked him how serious it was, what he should expect in the aftermath, etc.  And he made it seem like not a big deal.  He might have a little facial paralysis temporarily (Sort of like Bells Palsy), but nothing permanent.  And that might very well be true, but it doesn’t keep me from not feeling really freaked out by the whole thing.  It seems the ear story is actually more of a cover to not freak out anyone.

I get that…But now I find myself without much of an outlet for this.  I have things I’d like to say, I’d like to ask anyone who knows anything if they can shed any kind of light on this.  I’ve been googling brain stems, brain stem tumors, brain stem surgery, etc.  This isn’t the way I need to be spending my day.

According to dad this is a 14-16 hour surgery, meaning if it began at 10AM today (That’s what he said) it wouldn’t be done until at least midnight pacific tonight, to 2AM my time.  I can only hope I’ll be asleep by then, though there wasn’t a lot of sleep last night.  I hope he’s okay.  I really do.

And now, sitting here, I’m thinking back to earlier this year when I got to see my dad.  He and his brother, my Uncle Mike, came to Wisconsin for a giant family get together and it was kind of wonderful.  I got to go out and stay with them at a cabin on the lake for a few days and it one of my favorite adulthood memories I have with my dad.  I don’t even know why, it was just a VERY good time.  That was a great long weekend.  And it’s the first time I’d seen him since Christmas.  Great weekend.

Now I’ll just have to wait to get the call that all went well, and it’ll become a run the clock until I next get to go home to visit….Which will be over New Years weekend/the week that follows.  That will be a good time.  And this is about where the rambling begins, so this is where I’ll cut it off.

As no one seems to know what exactly is happening with all of this, I’m post-dating this entry.  It won’t appear until the actual surgery is over.