How it all ends up

Yep, I was right. He didn't know a thing about being left unstitched. I waited til the next morning when we were alone to tell him. He was not looking good, and talked of getting up and going to the restroom. I told him first, that he was in no shape to get up at all, and second that he was still open.

He looked at me, non-plussed.

"I'm what?"

"Open. The infection was so bad that he did not sew you up. You are packed."

"But...I don't feel anything."

"What do you mean?"

"No pain, no air, no nothing. Why can't I tell that I'm not sewn up?"

The answer to that, I was to find out later, is that there were no nerves left for him to feel anything in the area. All were rotted out by the infection and had to be removed. It's not like he had no feeling, though. After the first time he got unpacked and repacked, I walked in (what - did you think I was going to be staying and watching??) and he was sweating and shaking from the pain. Oh, he had feeling, it was just higher up.

He was not out of the woods, and now I could believe it. He was suffering, today, and he looked worse. He certainly was not joking around like he had been before. And, he had asked me to pull up a chair beside his bed and hold his hand as he slept. My baby boy wanted me beside him, and needed to feel that I was close. I did as he asked.

If I had to shift, he would wake up, so I tried hard not to have to move at all. I was facing the clock on the wall, however, and that was not a good thing. It reminded me of my labor with him. To time the contractions, there had been a HUGE wall clock with a white face and black hands and numbers on the wall in the labor room. I had watched the second-hand tick away the minutes and had repeatedly wished that time would just go faster. While I was not wishing the time away as before while I sat beside my son 23 years later, it sure was difficult to remain in one position as the minutes s-l-o-w-l-y slid by, second by second.

I decided to watch him sleep. It was difficult to watch his face through the bed-rail. I was in a terrible position. There were tubes and wires and I was sitting low in the chair. I kept the pressure of my hand equal, and kept my arm in the same position so as not to disturb him as I shifted up and changed my sitting position to one with my legs underneath me. He did not move; a small victory for me. Now, I had a good view of him as he slept. I much-preferred watching him sleep than watching the clock.

But what was this? His chest had stopped moving. Now, I could see his heartbeat through the hospital gown, but still no chest movement. Also, no breathing sounds at all. I had just decided that I would have to begin to panic when suddenly, a sharp gasp. Oh. Wow. Weird. Ok. Since he took that breath, I could chalk it up to just my worrying for nothing. Typical mother. What? It's happening again, except now, his chest is heaving, but no air is getting in - or out. What was going on, here? I watched him gasp again. This happened six times before I squeezed his hand and called his name.

"Wha-?" he said groggily.

"Are you dreaming?"

"No."

"Are you feeling ok?"

"Yeah...why?"

I told him that he had been breathing funny.

"Oh. Ok."

He stared up at the ceiling for a minute and his eyes closed again. With them still closed he said, "That makes sense...I've been having to remember to do it."

"Do what?"

"Breathe."

WHAT? As calmly as possible, I asked for clarification.

"Well, I am almost asleep, and then I remember that I have not taken a breath in a while. So I..." and he demonstrates the chest heaving that I had witnessed.

"Yes! That's what you were doing, before!"

"Oh. Ok."

He is totally unconcerned. It's as if he has had this problem forever. HAS he had this problem forever? I ask him if he does this normally, or if this is something new.

"No, it's new. Only since I got here."

I called the nurse. Geez. Seems that the pain meds were too strong...he really was "forgetting" to breathe. Visions of Michael Jackson's death swirled through my mind.

From there, things actually got better. He improved very slowly. He was a bad patient. He decided when his breathing treatments were over. He decided when it was time for him to get up and use the bathroom. He decided where he would walk when the nurses wanted him to get up and do so - all over the hospital, and up and down the elevators. It was also him who decided that he wanted to walk around in shorts and a t-shirt instead of a hospital gown. However, he lost that fight.

He is home now - discharged way too soon for my liking. He is not at my house, like I wanted him to be (at least for a couple of days), he is at his apartment. It is not fun for him to change his own dressings, but he does it. His first doctor appointment is this Thursday. He hates limits. He hates that the limits are justified, too. (He tripped the other day, and when his foot came down hard and jarred him, the pain at the site of his surgery was instant and momentarily unbearable). He is bored and restless, but he sleeps at the drop of a hat. He knows he will not be able to work for 6 weeks and it is gnawing on him. How will he pay his rent/utilities/doctor bills? These are questions that are slowly being resolved.

I've got to say, God is good, thinking back on this whole thing. To me, it makes no sense that his testicles are fine. So what that they have their own blood supply? I thought the infection had killed everything in the scrotum. So, what is contained in the scrotum? Helllooooo! But they are fine. What was the one thing that my son had been concerned about on the way to the hospital? That he not be sterile. Ok. He's not sterile. Do I believe that everything was rotted out and that, because Mikey mentioned that he wanted children someday, and that I was praying and so were my family that God said, "Because of the faith of your family, your testicles have been saved"? No! That is silly. I believe that God can do whatever He wants, but I don't believe that He did that. None of us were praying for his testicles. Not even Mikey was praying about his own testicles. We were praying for his life. I'm just saying that we got more than we asked for and that God is good.

For the record, if Mikey had become sterile (and just because he still has his testicles, does not mean that he is not sterile), or if Mikey had died, I would still believe that God is good. I am not here to get into theological arguments.

There is still plenty to worry about. I just hope that this chapter of his life has been a learning experience that he will not soon delegate to the story-telling section of his brain. I want it to have changed him in some way. They say that near-death experiences do that.

I hope so.