Home Again

Well, I’m home. I’m due for a painkiller pretty soon, and I suppose once that happens, I won’t feel like sitting here and typing.

At this point, before we actually have a pathology report, we believe that the cancer was contained within the kidney, and it has been successfully removed. I see the surgeon tomorrow, and there is some chance that the pathology report will be available at that time. The immediate, post-surgery report he gave to my wife indicated the cancer had not spread anywhere else. I’ll qualify that because he removed some lipid ducts that appeared enlarged, and we didn’t hear about that until later. I’m hopeful that was just the conservative thing to do.

I did have a couple of post-surgical complications, however. That means I didn’t return home until yesterday afternoon, which was Memorial Day and two days later than we expected. Waiting to be released that last day, I spent way too long watching CNN, which had very touching tributes from family for soldiers who had died in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Then I got the okay to be released. As my wife drove us off the hospital campus, I told her how happy I was to be headed home. “Happy, happy, happy,” I said.

Around bedtime yesterday evening, my six-year-old son, still very pleased to have his dad home, comes to bed to snuggle. “I’m happy your home, dad.”

I said, “I am, too. I told your mom how happy I was to be in the truck, headed home from the hospital. I was outdoors for the fist time since Thursday.”

He replied, “It’s nice to be outdoors. There’s fresh air, cool breezes and birds chirping.”

I believe that I could not have written a better description.