When Time Stood Still

Everyone has had it happen to them... when time stops. Be it from love, fright, whatever but it has happened to us all.

This is my story about when time stood still.

It was a normal week for us, I was working and my wife was a stay at home mom at the time. I got up and went to work as usual and my wife called and said she was taking our oldest son to the doctor again.

He was 6 at the time and had been having problems off and on for 6 months with what the doctors thought was a sinus problem. But that morning he had been acting fine and then all of the sudden grabbed his head and started screaming! So off to the doc he went.

I did not think much of it and continued working as usual.

About 2 hours later the boss came running into the plant and told me I had an important phone call! It was my mother, she was the office manager at the doctors office and she told me that they had sent my son to a specialist in a town nearby, as they could not figure out what was wrong with him at the local clinic and my wife had not had time to call me.

Ok great, maybe we will get to the bottom of this!

Another couple of hours go by and here comes the boss again. This time my mother is there. All right what's up now. So I go out and talk with her, she says we need to go to the specialist right now! The doctor had called her and asked if she could get me there ASAP.

Well what a drive! It tool about 30 minutes but seem like a eternity.

Got to the doctors but we were sent right back to her office..now what? She thanked us for coming so quickly and we headed to one of the rooms where my wife and son were waiting.
We went in and shortly after that was when.....time stood still.

She took out a CAT scan they did of my sons head, and you did not need to be a dr. to know something was not right...a huge spot in his brain area!

That was when Time stood still!

Now let me give you a short family history here.

6 relatives of mine had all been diagnosed with brain tumors none had lived longer than 6 months so you can guess what is going thru my mind.

The doctor gave us a choice of where we could go so we chose Portland and were told get there asap!

We tied up what loose ends we could, and headed for Portland a 3 hour trip plenty of time to think of all the worst case scenarios possible' Pure hell.

Finally got there and was sent straight up to the children's hospital where they were waiting on us. Got to the front desk there, where a doctor was also waiting. He grabs the CAT scan from my hand and motions for me to follow him while they checked in my son.

Well, it was life threatening but did not require immediate surgery we would be placed in line and or the first opening they had. We asked him when that would be he said possibly in 7 to 10 days but we had to stay at the hospital in case an opening came up.

They would only let one parent stay in the room overnight so dad was regulated to the car for the rest of the night...wasn't gonna sleep anyway.

So the next day we were sitting around and waiting when all of the sudden in rushed 3 nurses telling us you're up we have an opening! 4 hours later the surgery was over, and the doctor told us that they felt very good with the results so that was a relief.

The next 3 days were spent in ICU with no problems or side effects so they sent us back to the children's hospital. Now this whole time they had said nothing about the tumor, was it malignant or not, no one said.

Shortly after we had settled in at the children's hospital the doctor stopped by to check his progress. By this time I had had enough and asked him about the tumor.

Turned out to be benign! In fact, he said that for children it was a very common type of tumor and that they usually grew in the brain.

So the story finishes with my son now being 22 with little to no side effects, did have a hard time growing up but will cover that some other time. But he is the only family member to have
survived a brain tumor.

So I will end this now because....

It is what it is
Rod