living in loss and gratitude

News, news, and more news.

Of course, after posting my phenomena of not having a headache with the last rain, I awoke with symptoms of a headache on Friday morning…the morning of Cole’s surgery day.  And lo, it turned into a full blown migraine…while Cole was under the knife.  I will write a second posting, after this one, titled, “Betty Cranker the marriage killer”, you’re sure to enjoy it, or unsubscribe to my blog–one or the other.  Turns out it did rain the next day, Saturday…my internal barometer is back at work.  Bummer!

The name of the surgery is so long I can hardly remember any names from it.  I will pause and see if I can find it online, hold please…ok forget it, too many plastic surgeons in our area…I can’t find the name of the surgery.  Well anyway, when I was called back to see my son, I turned the corner of the room and came upon his post-op bed only to find a prize fighter, with two very swollen eyes, red and black and blue, with tears of blood slowly creeping their way down his cheek.  Cole Bent turned Cole Balboa!  Apparently all went well and what I was witnessing was normal.

Now funny thing is, Cole has a tattoo on his forearm of a rendition of Jesus crying tears of blood, so all I could say, upon seeing the red tears under his eyes was, “hey Cole–you look like Jesus.”  And of course he had to come back with some dry “Cole style” comment even while still being under the influence of the sedative.  Funny kid!

Well all has been going well over the weekend.  We have been putting in his antibiotic cream, applying cool compresses, and not messing with the area near the eyes, even though I desperately wanted to clean the dry blood in and around the eyes.  But tonight…tonight…tonight…

AAAAAAaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh, tonight.  Tonight I was in the kitchen making dinner when all of a sudden Cole appears and says, “Um mom, my eye is bleeding.”  I turned from the stove to see my son standing at the counter with a red stream of blood pouring from his eye, like a perfect red line was drawn down his cheek onto his chest and down to the floor.  At that moment our household moved to “DEFCON 1”.  Esther took over at the stove, I attended to Cole, his eye, and getting the UCI doctor on the phone, Brian attended to cleaning the blood off the carpet and floor all the while doing his best to gather the supplies I was calling out for him to get (why is it when there is an emergency involving blood, not a clean rag, tissue or cloth is anywhere to be found? …baffling I tell you!).  The good news brought forth from the telephone is that at about day 3, it is “normal” to have a blood vessel “erupt” because during surgery they had to cut a few of them and subsequently seal them via cauterization.  So the good doctor said that all was well as long as the bleeding stopped within five minutes…which it did.  Whew, back to DEFCON 4…we haven’t hit 5 since Cole’s surgery.  And in all honesty, I don’t know if we will ever go back to that place of rest.  Though one can hope, and hope I am full of!

Now I just paused writing for about 40 minutes because Cole needed me to help get him settled for the night.  And lo and behold, just to set our evening down with a cherry on top, the other eye sprung a leak.  It too settled itself before the 5 minute marker…yuck!  Now how is that for a bedtime story?  Speaking of stories, after things had settled down some Esther, my lovely teenaged daughter, announced, “I don’t ever have to see a horror movie…I live it here!”  And you know something? She is right.  AND, she is currently cuddled next to me and in between her dad and I.

I will close at this good point.

Cole's after surgery look

Tags: eye surgery, outpatient surgery, Rocky Balboa