November 05, 2001
The following is my recap of the day nine years ago...from Counting on a Miracle...Sterlinghouse Publisher
The day was cold and damp. We left the house in darkness, and all three of us were still wiping sleep from our eyes. Kathy was partially through her caffeine and nicotine fix, and Jake’s eyes seemed to be rolling from a lack of sleep.
I can’t say that I felt as if I had, “sleep in the bank,” as Doctor Levitt had prescribed, but adrenalin was definitely surging through my veins. I despised the idea that I would have to make the daily trek to The Children’s Hospital of Buffalo, but I could only pray that I would be making it every day for the next week or so.
“Who is the best surgeon in the world?” Kathy asked. She had asked this question before, but it was especially unsettling this morning.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Don’t you think he deserves to have the best surgeon in the world working on him?”
“Of course he does,” I said. “Come on, don’t do this. You know the reputation of Children’s Hospital. This is where we want to be. Besides, who’s to say that these doctors aren’t the best at this sort of operation?”
"I just want to be able to say that we did the best we could,” she whispered.
I refused to resign myself to such dark thoughts. My mind shifted to prayer as I put a John Mellencamp CD into the drive and turned it up a little.
We walked hand-in-hand through the emergency room doors. Jake hadn’t said a word, and I wondered if he was upset at all. Kathy knew right where to go, and within a few minutes we were standing in front of the desk at admissions. Jake was all signed in, but the wall clock showed that it was just ten minutes after six. Surgery wasn’t scheduled until seven-thirty. What would we possibly do for all that time? Still, I wasn’t in any position to wish even a minute away. We were shuffled to a large waiting room with an extensive selection of toys, including a Pokemon video machine. Even though Jake wasn’t much into the characters, he headed for the machine.
“Are there bad guys to fight?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know, let’s see,” I said.
I hoisted him up, and he studied the screen. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do to turn the machine on, and Jake pounded at a couple of the buttons. Kathy was getting the rest of the paperwork in order, but she was watching us out of the corner of her eye. I was as worried about her as I was about Jake. As a mother, her heart had been breaking for the better part of a month. She would be a basket case in a matter of hours.
“I’m really tired,” Jake said. He yawned big and wide, and I rubbed his bald head.
“Why don’t we play with your battling robots?” I asked.
Jake received seven of the large, plastic, multi-colored robots during his first hospital visit, and John and Dana delivered the eighth the night before. We set the robots up on a small, wooden coffee table in the center of the room and used the remote controls attached to each robot to smash them together. There were a few other people in the waiting room, and their eyes were drawn to our battle. I had to be real careful not to knock Jake’s robot over, and after he beat me five or six times, he asked for Kathy.
“Dad, why don’t you let Mom battle for awhile? You aren’t very good at this.”
I gave up my spot at the table so Kathy could take a turn at getting beat and acting upset. Every once in a while, Kathy looked at me, and I could see the sheer terror in her eyes. I just knew that, like me, lightning was running through her veins. We were both on the absolute brink of a complete breakdown, and we were playing battling robots.
After what seemed like an eternity, we were shuffled to the surgical waiting room. We lost the Pokemon machine, but another set of toys and books was waiting for us. I read a couple of books and showed Jake the pictures of a few large animals. He couldn’t stop yawning, and he complained a couple of times about being hungry.
“The doctors are going to do their magic, and when you wake up you can have whatever you want.” I wasn’t sure he’d be able to eat for quite some time, but I was trying hard to comfort him.
Jake was well aware that he was going to sleep through the magic act. “Will you be here when I wake up?” Jake asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. I kissed him a few times, and Kathy couldn’t resist the urge to join in. For almost a half an hour we passed him back and forth like a tiny baby, kissing and hugging him. Jake giggled through most of it, but he also kissed us back.
Doctor Levitt stopped by a few minutes after eight o’clock. We had expected the surgery to start earlier, but we were glad to see Doctor Levitt who appeared alert and centered.
“We’re almost ready,” he said, and rubbed Jake’s head in a friendly way.
“Are you doing the magic?” Jake asked.
Doctor Levitt smiled. “Not yet.” He bent down and whispered something to Jake. I stole a look at Kathy, who offered me a nervous smile.
“Wow, he’s asymptomatic. I was expecting his breathing to be a little more labored,” Doctor Levitt said. “This can go very well.”
He turned to the door, and, as the words sunk into my brain, tears filled my eyes. I wanted to share the moment with Kathy, and this time her smile was much brighter.
“It might be a long day,” Doctor Levitt said, “but we’ll be getting started soon. We’re setting up the ECMO team.”
Doctor Caty had explained to us earlier that the ECMO is similar in principle to a cardiopulmonary bypass that is done to allow cardiac surgeons to operate on the non-beating heart. Doctor Caty had been trained at the University of Michigan by Doctor Robert Bartlett, the man credited with inventing ECMO in the 1970s. The ECMO team involved an attendant from the intensive care unit, a nurse, an ECMO specialist, and a pediatric surgeon to place the catheters in the blood vessels.
“I hope they don’t have to use that ECMO thing,” Kathy said.
“I’m glad they have it if they need it,” I said.
Jake was visibly agitated. He was alternating between biting his fingernails and kicking his feet against the chair bottom. It was amazing that his instincts were so sharp. He had little idea about what he was facing, but he was becoming more scared by the minute. He complained about being tired and hungry, and I wanted to scoop him up in my arms and carry him home. Nonetheless, we spent another fifty minutes waiting for the preparation work to be completed.
I have little recollection of who actually took Jake from Kathy’s arms into the waiting room, but his cries of terror will stay with me until the day I leave this earth. “Dad, I don’t want to go! Mom, I’m not ready yet!”
We kissed his beautiful face about a hundred times inside of two minutes. The tears streamed down our faces while the attendant waited patiently. “It’s magic, Jake,” I told him. “You’ll be all right. Just do good, buddy. I love you!”
Kathy followed Jake and the attendant to the operating room door, nearly doubled over in grief. When she turned back to me, I held her tightly as we cried together without restraint.
“He’s got to be all right,” she sobbed over and over.
“It’s up to God and these people,” I said. “We did our jobs. We got him here, and we showed him love every minute of his life.”
***
We were all too aware that the most pivotal moment of the surgery would take place when the anesthesologists did their work. The men placed in charge of Jake’s care were Doctor Doron Feldman and Doctor James Foster. Doctor Bradley Fuhrman, the director of the ICU, was also crucial to the success of the operation as he organized the activities. Properly regulating anesthesia is important in all operations, and it is particularly tricky for children. Additionally, Jake was a special case, as his breathing was compromised by the tumor. My prayers during that first fifteen minutes of the operation were centered on Doctor Feldman, Doctor Fuhrman, and Doctor Foster.
I felt absolutely helpless as Kathy and I headed to the surgical waiting room on the second floor. Our family was waiting for us there; John was sitting against the back wall next to Kathy’s sister Lorie and my sister Corinne. We were well prepared for a long day of waiting, as Corinne brought enough food to feed everyone in the waiting room and the surgical team. Her thoughtfulness and unbelievable compassion brought instant tears to my eyes.
I sat beside Lorie, and she grabbed my hand. We are good buddies and usually find one another at all the family parties. We’ve shared hundreds of laughs, and yet Lorie felt a lot like a sister as she worked to comfort me. “I just know he’ll be fine,” Lorie said.
"This first half-hour is the important part,” I said. “If he goes under okay, we’ll be halfway through the battle.”
"He’s a tough little boy,” Lorie said.
As Lorie said the words, I felt an overwhelming sense of grief. I had often told Kathy not to imagine Jake on the operating table, but I couldn’t help but picture it in my mind. I thought of Frosty the Snowman melting in the greenhouse behind the locked door, and I began to shake. Kathy handed me a coffee, and I sipped it with a quivering lower lip. “Come on, God,” I whispered.
The wall clock was moving especially slowly. Kathy’s hand was coupled with mine and Corinne, John, and Lorie were whispering words of encouragement.
“This is the worst day of our lives,” Kathy whispered.
"It’s going to be the best day,” I said.
At twenty minutes to ten – just forty minutes after the start of surgery – a member of the anesthesiology team opened the door.
“He’s under just fine,” she whispered. “Doctor Levitt wanted me to let you know. Jake’s left lung is doing all the work, and he’s real comfortable.”
I pumped my fist and hugged my brother. Corinne was holding Kathy, and Lorie was waiting for someone to grab onto. We were a long way from being out of the woods, but we had passed the first test.
The minutes crawled by. My mother and father joined the gathering, and their presence made my heart ache even more. Kathy left the room a couple of times to call her parents on my cell phone. They were at their house watching Sam, and I couldn’t even imagine what they were going through. I drank a huge cup of coffee, and when I was done John offered me a can of chewing tobacco which I gladly accepted. I had a pinch of tobacco, spitting into the empty coffee cup. My heart was under tremendous strain, and the pain radiating up and down my left arm was much more pronounced. I must have looked pale because Lori offered me something to eat.
Kathy was passing around a plate of pastries, but I shook her off. I was in the middle of the rosary again. Lori edged to the table in the corner of the room. She reached into a bag and pulled out a deck of cards. Before long, a lifeless game of scat was in full swing. John, Lorie, Corinne, and Kathy tossed the cards out, always keeping an eye on the door and the ticking clock.
“I need to go for a walk,” I said. The clock read 10:15, and I blinked away thoughts of Jake lying on that operating room table. I headed down the hall to the rest room just around the corner, where I splashed water on my face and cried at my reflection in the mirror. “Come on, God.”
As I stepped from the room, I immediately recognized Doctor Grossi walking with two other men, removing masks from their faces. Doctor Grossi had been the first doctor to talk to us after the discovery of Jake’s tumor. Behind the masks were ear-to-ear grins. When Doctor Grossi recognized me, his smile grew even wider.
“He’s doing wonderful,” Doctor Grossi said. “They opened him up, and it’s sitting right there.”
“It’s a piece of cake,” one of the other doctors said.
My heart jumped into my throat. I did all I could to stop myself from dropping to my knees. I took a deep breath and hurried back to the waiting room to make the announcement. I spent the next twenty minutes hugging and kissing my family.
Kathy, Lorie, John, and Corinne were still playing scat at the front of the room. My mother and father paced the floor nervously, sipping coffee at a record pace. Finally, out of sheer frustration from everyone telling me to eat something, I headed to a small table in the back corner of the room to make a sandwich. I glanced at the wall clock – it was fifteen minutes after twelve – Jake had been in surgery for two and a half hours.
As I put the mustard on the bread, I heard the door swing open. Then I saw Doctor Caty was approaching Kathy, and my world started to spin too fast. It was too early. Doctor Caty was supposed to be in the operating room. What was he doing out here?
“He wants to talk to us,” Kathy said without raising her voice.
I pulled back away from the table, and the bread hit the floor at my feet. I didn’t even bother to pick it up. I hurried to the patient-doctor conference room adjacent to the waiting area. Doctor Caty entered and took a seat. “You can all come in,” Doctor Caty said. “It went well.”
Mom and Dad rushed in right behind us. I felt my father’s hand on my right shoulder and realized that it has been there for all the important moments of my life. Corinne, John, and Lorie grabbed a place behind me, and Kathy sat across the table on the other side of Doctor Caty.
“We were able to get it out without complication. Doctor Levitt is closing him up, and it went real well. He’s a tough kid,” Doctor Caty said.
I don’t know what it was about Doctor Caty, but he seemed to be as mentally spent as I felt. I could feel tears gather in my eyes, and I expected those. What surprised me was to see that Doctor Caty was on the verge of tears too.
“When we put him under, his left lung held on and carried him through the operation. The anesthesiologists did a fantastic job throughout, and we didn’t have to use the ECMO unit.” Doctor Caty paused for a long moment. “It went as well as could be expected.”
I’m not sure how Doctor Caty felt at that moment, but I knew what was racing through my heart and soul. “Somebody better hug this guy,” I said to anyone that might listen. Doctor Caty flashed a relaxed smile, though tears glistened in his eyes. Everyone in the room looked too stunned to move. “I’m going to do it then,” I said and stood up. So did Doctor Caty. I threw my arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. “Thank you,” I said.
“We’re glad we could do it,” he murmured.
The dam was broken. Kathy and Lori also hugged Doctor Caty. I’m not sure if he went through hugs on a daily basis, but he took it well. “Doctor Levitt will be out in a little while and he’ll break it all down for you. I was just helping out in there.”
I couldn’t believe that he was so humble, but the entire hospital staff had performed their jobs in such a manner. Each doctor deferred to the other, and the work on Jake’s case seemed to be equally divided with only one true goal; to send him home healthy and happy.
After Doctor Caty left, we spent the next ten minutes crying in each other’s arms. It felt so good to hug my mother, who wept tears of joy. “I knew God wouldn’t let me down,” I said. “You taught me to pray to God and I’ve talked to him all my life.” My voice broke as I searched for the right words. “I talked to God about everything and he was there for us. Thank you, Mom for teaching me faith.”
Mom cried even harder, but I had to break away from her for a moment. I found Kathy just a few feet away. She was wrapped in Corinne’s embrace. I tapped Corinne on the shoulder and said, “I need to see my wife for a second.” Corinne gladly stepped aside, and I pulled my wonderful wife close to me.
“Jake did it!” I cried. “Our beautiful boy is going to be all right!”
It seemed that everything that happened in my entire life led up to that very moment. Kathy cried into my right shoulder, and I kissed her face over and over. “I love you for helping me through this,” I said. “I love you for having faith.”
Kathy and I cried together as our family looked on.
***
At 1:15, Doctor Levitt led us into the same patient conference room, his eyes alive with his success. He was as thrilled as we were. “Jacob did very well,” he said. “We were able to go in and do our work, and he’s stable. We got every piece of it, and from the looks of it, it is most likely a benign tumor. We will send it to the lab, and they’ll take it apart and study it. There was hair and bone in it, and I predict that it is benign.”
It was the second piece of wonderful news that we’d heard in just over an hour. Kathy’s hand felt warm in mine, and the smile on her face made her tears inconsequential.
“When he comes out of the operating room, he’ll be heavily sedated, and he’s going to look a little puffed up. He’ll have tubes in a lot of different places; don’t be alarmed, that’s what he’s supposed to look like after an operation like this. Slowly but surely, we’ll remove the tubes and give him back to you as good as new. Does anyone have any questions?”
“When will you know if the tumor is benign?” Kathy asked.
“In about three to five days,” Doctor Levitt said. “First things first, though. Let’s not worry about that unless we have to. Like I said, it sure looked benign.” His smile was as bright as day. I glanced around the table. “Are you guys going to make me hug him first?” I asked.
This time there was a line to hug the doctor. My admiration for the man who saved Jake’s life was threatening to turn me into a babbling idiot. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I whispered as I hugged him.
"I was glad to do it,” Doctor Levitt said.
The day was cold and damp. We left the house in darkness, and all three of us were still wiping sleep from our eyes. Kathy was partially through her caffeine and nicotine fix, and Jake’s eyes seemed to be rolling from a lack of sleep.
I can’t say that I felt as if I had, “sleep in the bank,” as Doctor Levitt had prescribed, but adrenalin was definitely surging through my veins. I despised the idea that I would have to make the daily trek to The Children’s Hospital of Buffalo, but I could only pray that I would be making it every day for the next week or so.
“Who is the best surgeon in the world?” Kathy asked. She had asked this question before, but it was especially unsettling this morning.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Don’t you think he deserves to have the best surgeon in the world working on him?”
“Of course he does,” I said. “Come on, don’t do this. You know the reputation of Children’s Hospital. This is where we want to be. Besides, who’s to say that these doctors aren’t the best at this sort of operation?”
"I just want to be able to say that we did the best we could,” she whispered.
I refused to resign myself to such dark thoughts. My mind shifted to prayer as I put a John Mellencamp CD into the drive and turned it up a little.
We walked hand-in-hand through the emergency room doors. Jake hadn’t said a word, and I wondered if he was upset at all. Kathy knew right where to go, and within a few minutes we were standing in front of the desk at admissions. Jake was all signed in, but the wall clock showed that it was just ten minutes after six. Surgery wasn’t scheduled until seven-thirty. What would we possibly do for all that time? Still, I wasn’t in any position to wish even a minute away. We were shuffled to a large waiting room with an extensive selection of toys, including a Pokemon video machine. Even though Jake wasn’t much into the characters, he headed for the machine.
“Are there bad guys to fight?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know, let’s see,” I said.
I hoisted him up, and he studied the screen. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do to turn the machine on, and Jake pounded at a couple of the buttons. Kathy was getting the rest of the paperwork in order, but she was watching us out of the corner of her eye. I was as worried about her as I was about Jake. As a mother, her heart had been breaking for the better part of a month. She would be a basket case in a matter of hours.
“I’m really tired,” Jake said. He yawned big and wide, and I rubbed his bald head.
“Why don’t we play with your battling robots?” I asked.
Jake received seven of the large, plastic, multi-colored robots during his first hospital visit, and John and Dana delivered the eighth the night before. We set the robots up on a small, wooden coffee table in the center of the room and used the remote controls attached to each robot to smash them together. There were a few other people in the waiting room, and their eyes were drawn to our battle. I had to be real careful not to knock Jake’s robot over, and after he beat me five or six times, he asked for Kathy.
“Dad, why don’t you let Mom battle for awhile? You aren’t very good at this.”
I gave up my spot at the table so Kathy could take a turn at getting beat and acting upset. Every once in a while, Kathy looked at me, and I could see the sheer terror in her eyes. I just knew that, like me, lightning was running through her veins. We were both on the absolute brink of a complete breakdown, and we were playing battling robots.
After what seemed like an eternity, we were shuffled to the surgical waiting room. We lost the Pokemon machine, but another set of toys and books was waiting for us. I read a couple of books and showed Jake the pictures of a few large animals. He couldn’t stop yawning, and he complained a couple of times about being hungry.
“The doctors are going to do their magic, and when you wake up you can have whatever you want.” I wasn’t sure he’d be able to eat for quite some time, but I was trying hard to comfort him.
Jake was well aware that he was going to sleep through the magic act. “Will you be here when I wake up?” Jake asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. I kissed him a few times, and Kathy couldn’t resist the urge to join in. For almost a half an hour we passed him back and forth like a tiny baby, kissing and hugging him. Jake giggled through most of it, but he also kissed us back.
Doctor Levitt stopped by a few minutes after eight o’clock. We had expected the surgery to start earlier, but we were glad to see Doctor Levitt who appeared alert and centered.
“We’re almost ready,” he said, and rubbed Jake’s head in a friendly way.
“Are you doing the magic?” Jake asked.
Doctor Levitt smiled. “Not yet.” He bent down and whispered something to Jake. I stole a look at Kathy, who offered me a nervous smile.
“Wow, he’s asymptomatic. I was expecting his breathing to be a little more labored,” Doctor Levitt said. “This can go very well.”
He turned to the door, and, as the words sunk into my brain, tears filled my eyes. I wanted to share the moment with Kathy, and this time her smile was much brighter.
“It might be a long day,” Doctor Levitt said, “but we’ll be getting started soon. We’re setting up the ECMO team.”
Doctor Caty had explained to us earlier that the ECMO is similar in principle to a cardiopulmonary bypass that is done to allow cardiac surgeons to operate on the non-beating heart. Doctor Caty had been trained at the University of Michigan by Doctor Robert Bartlett, the man credited with inventing ECMO in the 1970s. The ECMO team involved an attendant from the intensive care unit, a nurse, an ECMO specialist, and a pediatric surgeon to place the catheters in the blood vessels.
“I hope they don’t have to use that ECMO thing,” Kathy said.
“I’m glad they have it if they need it,” I said.
Jake was visibly agitated. He was alternating between biting his fingernails and kicking his feet against the chair bottom. It was amazing that his instincts were so sharp. He had little idea about what he was facing, but he was becoming more scared by the minute. He complained about being tired and hungry, and I wanted to scoop him up in my arms and carry him home. Nonetheless, we spent another fifty minutes waiting for the preparation work to be completed.
I have little recollection of who actually took Jake from Kathy’s arms into the waiting room, but his cries of terror will stay with me until the day I leave this earth. “Dad, I don’t want to go! Mom, I’m not ready yet!”
We kissed his beautiful face about a hundred times inside of two minutes. The tears streamed down our faces while the attendant waited patiently. “It’s magic, Jake,” I told him. “You’ll be all right. Just do good, buddy. I love you!”
Kathy followed Jake and the attendant to the operating room door, nearly doubled over in grief. When she turned back to me, I held her tightly as we cried together without restraint.
“He’s got to be all right,” she sobbed over and over.
“It’s up to God and these people,” I said. “We did our jobs. We got him here, and we showed him love every minute of his life.”
***
We were all too aware that the most pivotal moment of the surgery would take place when the anesthesologists did their work. The men placed in charge of Jake’s care were Doctor Doron Feldman and Doctor James Foster. Doctor Bradley Fuhrman, the director of the ICU, was also crucial to the success of the operation as he organized the activities. Properly regulating anesthesia is important in all operations, and it is particularly tricky for children. Additionally, Jake was a special case, as his breathing was compromised by the tumor. My prayers during that first fifteen minutes of the operation were centered on Doctor Feldman, Doctor Fuhrman, and Doctor Foster.
I felt absolutely helpless as Kathy and I headed to the surgical waiting room on the second floor. Our family was waiting for us there; John was sitting against the back wall next to Kathy’s sister Lorie and my sister Corinne. We were well prepared for a long day of waiting, as Corinne brought enough food to feed everyone in the waiting room and the surgical team. Her thoughtfulness and unbelievable compassion brought instant tears to my eyes.
I sat beside Lorie, and she grabbed my hand. We are good buddies and usually find one another at all the family parties. We’ve shared hundreds of laughs, and yet Lorie felt a lot like a sister as she worked to comfort me. “I just know he’ll be fine,” Lorie said.
"This first half-hour is the important part,” I said. “If he goes under okay, we’ll be halfway through the battle.”
"He’s a tough little boy,” Lorie said.
As Lorie said the words, I felt an overwhelming sense of grief. I had often told Kathy not to imagine Jake on the operating table, but I couldn’t help but picture it in my mind. I thought of Frosty the Snowman melting in the greenhouse behind the locked door, and I began to shake. Kathy handed me a coffee, and I sipped it with a quivering lower lip. “Come on, God,” I whispered.
The wall clock was moving especially slowly. Kathy’s hand was coupled with mine and Corinne, John, and Lorie were whispering words of encouragement.
“This is the worst day of our lives,” Kathy whispered.
"It’s going to be the best day,” I said.
At twenty minutes to ten – just forty minutes after the start of surgery – a member of the anesthesiology team opened the door.
“He’s under just fine,” she whispered. “Doctor Levitt wanted me to let you know. Jake’s left lung is doing all the work, and he’s real comfortable.”
I pumped my fist and hugged my brother. Corinne was holding Kathy, and Lorie was waiting for someone to grab onto. We were a long way from being out of the woods, but we had passed the first test.
The minutes crawled by. My mother and father joined the gathering, and their presence made my heart ache even more. Kathy left the room a couple of times to call her parents on my cell phone. They were at their house watching Sam, and I couldn’t even imagine what they were going through. I drank a huge cup of coffee, and when I was done John offered me a can of chewing tobacco which I gladly accepted. I had a pinch of tobacco, spitting into the empty coffee cup. My heart was under tremendous strain, and the pain radiating up and down my left arm was much more pronounced. I must have looked pale because Lori offered me something to eat.
Kathy was passing around a plate of pastries, but I shook her off. I was in the middle of the rosary again. Lori edged to the table in the corner of the room. She reached into a bag and pulled out a deck of cards. Before long, a lifeless game of scat was in full swing. John, Lorie, Corinne, and Kathy tossed the cards out, always keeping an eye on the door and the ticking clock.
“I need to go for a walk,” I said. The clock read 10:15, and I blinked away thoughts of Jake lying on that operating room table. I headed down the hall to the rest room just around the corner, where I splashed water on my face and cried at my reflection in the mirror. “Come on, God.”
As I stepped from the room, I immediately recognized Doctor Grossi walking with two other men, removing masks from their faces. Doctor Grossi had been the first doctor to talk to us after the discovery of Jake’s tumor. Behind the masks were ear-to-ear grins. When Doctor Grossi recognized me, his smile grew even wider.
“He’s doing wonderful,” Doctor Grossi said. “They opened him up, and it’s sitting right there.”
“It’s a piece of cake,” one of the other doctors said.
My heart jumped into my throat. I did all I could to stop myself from dropping to my knees. I took a deep breath and hurried back to the waiting room to make the announcement. I spent the next twenty minutes hugging and kissing my family.
Kathy, Lorie, John, and Corinne were still playing scat at the front of the room. My mother and father paced the floor nervously, sipping coffee at a record pace. Finally, out of sheer frustration from everyone telling me to eat something, I headed to a small table in the back corner of the room to make a sandwich. I glanced at the wall clock – it was fifteen minutes after twelve – Jake had been in surgery for two and a half hours.
As I put the mustard on the bread, I heard the door swing open. Then I saw Doctor Caty was approaching Kathy, and my world started to spin too fast. It was too early. Doctor Caty was supposed to be in the operating room. What was he doing out here?
“He wants to talk to us,” Kathy said without raising her voice.
I pulled back away from the table, and the bread hit the floor at my feet. I didn’t even bother to pick it up. I hurried to the patient-doctor conference room adjacent to the waiting area. Doctor Caty entered and took a seat. “You can all come in,” Doctor Caty said. “It went well.”
Mom and Dad rushed in right behind us. I felt my father’s hand on my right shoulder and realized that it has been there for all the important moments of my life. Corinne, John, and Lorie grabbed a place behind me, and Kathy sat across the table on the other side of Doctor Caty.
“We were able to get it out without complication. Doctor Levitt is closing him up, and it went real well. He’s a tough kid,” Doctor Caty said.
I don’t know what it was about Doctor Caty, but he seemed to be as mentally spent as I felt. I could feel tears gather in my eyes, and I expected those. What surprised me was to see that Doctor Caty was on the verge of tears too.
“When we put him under, his left lung held on and carried him through the operation. The anesthesiologists did a fantastic job throughout, and we didn’t have to use the ECMO unit.” Doctor Caty paused for a long moment. “It went as well as could be expected.”
I’m not sure how Doctor Caty felt at that moment, but I knew what was racing through my heart and soul. “Somebody better hug this guy,” I said to anyone that might listen. Doctor Caty flashed a relaxed smile, though tears glistened in his eyes. Everyone in the room looked too stunned to move. “I’m going to do it then,” I said and stood up. So did Doctor Caty. I threw my arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. “Thank you,” I said.
“We’re glad we could do it,” he murmured.
The dam was broken. Kathy and Lori also hugged Doctor Caty. I’m not sure if he went through hugs on a daily basis, but he took it well. “Doctor Levitt will be out in a little while and he’ll break it all down for you. I was just helping out in there.”
I couldn’t believe that he was so humble, but the entire hospital staff had performed their jobs in such a manner. Each doctor deferred to the other, and the work on Jake’s case seemed to be equally divided with only one true goal; to send him home healthy and happy.
After Doctor Caty left, we spent the next ten minutes crying in each other’s arms. It felt so good to hug my mother, who wept tears of joy. “I knew God wouldn’t let me down,” I said. “You taught me to pray to God and I’ve talked to him all my life.” My voice broke as I searched for the right words. “I talked to God about everything and he was there for us. Thank you, Mom for teaching me faith.”
Mom cried even harder, but I had to break away from her for a moment. I found Kathy just a few feet away. She was wrapped in Corinne’s embrace. I tapped Corinne on the shoulder and said, “I need to see my wife for a second.” Corinne gladly stepped aside, and I pulled my wonderful wife close to me.
“Jake did it!” I cried. “Our beautiful boy is going to be all right!”
It seemed that everything that happened in my entire life led up to that very moment. Kathy cried into my right shoulder, and I kissed her face over and over. “I love you for helping me through this,” I said. “I love you for having faith.”
Kathy and I cried together as our family looked on.
***
At 1:15, Doctor Levitt led us into the same patient conference room, his eyes alive with his success. He was as thrilled as we were. “Jacob did very well,” he said. “We were able to go in and do our work, and he’s stable. We got every piece of it, and from the looks of it, it is most likely a benign tumor. We will send it to the lab, and they’ll take it apart and study it. There was hair and bone in it, and I predict that it is benign.”
It was the second piece of wonderful news that we’d heard in just over an hour. Kathy’s hand felt warm in mine, and the smile on her face made her tears inconsequential.
“When he comes out of the operating room, he’ll be heavily sedated, and he’s going to look a little puffed up. He’ll have tubes in a lot of different places; don’t be alarmed, that’s what he’s supposed to look like after an operation like this. Slowly but surely, we’ll remove the tubes and give him back to you as good as new. Does anyone have any questions?”
“When will you know if the tumor is benign?” Kathy asked.
“In about three to five days,” Doctor Levitt said. “First things first, though. Let’s not worry about that unless we have to. Like I said, it sure looked benign.” His smile was as bright as day. I glanced around the table. “Are you guys going to make me hug him first?” I asked.
This time there was a line to hug the doctor. My admiration for the man who saved Jake’s life was threatening to turn me into a babbling idiot. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I whispered as I hugged him.
"I was glad to do it,” Doctor Levitt said.
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