My dad had surgery this week to remove a tumor from his kidney. A big tumor – 10 lbs. There wasn’t really much left of the kidney; the tumor had consumed most of it. It was cancerous – a renal carcinoma is the medical term. But, it appears that the cancer was contained to the kidney, and didn’t spread to other places in his abdomen, or bones.
Funny the way circumstances work for good (thank God). He had decided just a couple of weeks ago to put guards on his gutters to keep the pine tags out of them (he lives in a cool pine forest that used to be part of my grandfather’s farm). After going up and down the ladder about 50 times to do that job, he noticed blood in his urine, but -unfortunately- dismissed it. The next day (Friday, February 20), he woke up very early in extreme pain. So Mom took him to the emergency room – after a bunch of scans and tests, they found the tumor. Surgery was scheduled for Tuesday, March 3 – and went off without a hitch (if you don’t count the surgeon having to use a chainsaw to cut his way out of his driveway – a snow casualty). He had a ton of visitors and calls in the 3 1/2 days that he was in there, and couldn’t really eat anything solid until just before he left. My mom stayed with him the whole time – we have extended family experience with things going wrong when people are left alone, so she wouldn’t have him be there alone. I don’t know if it was really necessary, but I’m glad she was there – she didn’t get a lot of sleep, though, so she was exhausted by the time they left (she would never say so).
When the doctors told them Friday morning that Dad could go home, it didn’t take them long to vacate the place. Debbie and Lindsey went over to the hospital around noon to visit him (because we thought there would be no way he’d be out of there before the weekend), and they were gone. The drove back to Nottoway County, and now he’s home at Pine Forest (what they call their 20-acre place; it’s not a rest home or anything) recuperating. I’m sure he’ll be back on his feet before too long; there’s a lot of work calling his name. He keeps a big garden and maintains a good-sized stand of pines that probably lost a lot of limbs in the March 2 snowstorm.
Dad will turn 70 in about six weeks. l’m glad he’s going to be alright. I suspect he’ll be around for a good while longer, which is good: I want my children’s children to get a chance to know him too.
