It's holiday time....it's another medical issue with Alex....and it's our 6th holiday season without Ian and the first without my mom.
I spent the morning with Alex in a surgeon's office hoping he could alleviate Alex's pain from this latest abscess before Thanksgiving (his third skin infection this year). The last few days since Alex alerted us to this newest infection have thrown me back emotionally; caretaker 24/7, the realization that this will never end, that it will always be one more battle, one more worry, more sleeplessness nights, I sleep with the door open so he can get me at a moment's notice.....but I'm his mom, I can't quit.
I keep remembering waking up to texts from Ian. Some said, "Momma, I need you." but one morning it simply said, "help". I dashed into his room to see what the crisis of the day was. It's funny how one word can crush your spirit and the fear of seeing it again can throw you into a panic. But this is my life.
I'm thankful that we were able to get into see the surgeon today. He's had this same thing before, in February, so we thought we knew what to expect but that didn't stop a quietness from coming over Alex the last couple of days.....he knew it would be painful but he knew it was the only way to fix the problem so my amazing son faced it bravely and marched ahead. I remember a particular 19 year old facing life the same way.
The one problem with detecting an abscess early is that it's a little harder to find it and open it. The surgeon wasn't a 100% sure he could do that today but the alternative was to wait and let it get worse and possibly be in the ER over the holiday so we opted for hope. He was able to find the right spot, much to everyone's relief in the room and the abscess was bigger than we all thought just buried deeper.....and it was much more painful even with numbing it. I have two of the bravest sons - both in their own way.
So we begin the healing process and Alex is feeling some relief. Since this is his third skin infection we questioned all his doctors about any correlation between this and his new immunosuppressent medicine. All were in agreement that his immunosuppressent is causing these recurring infections. We've talked with Stanford and will be discussing how we can prevent these in the future. We already know through a new assay test performed by Stanford that Alex is being highly over-suppressed so they are starting to lower his medicine dosage. We suspect that by the end of this, he will be on a extremely low dosage (he's already on the lowest dose that Loma Linda felt comfortable with). This also helped to confirm that our move to Stanford was the right one for Alex at this time. Once again, we may be entering unknown waters but that's been Alex's life - facing horrendous obstacles and surprising the medical community and sometimes providing a new way to do things.
We'll have a quiet Thanksgiving with just immediate family; no fancy table decorations, no photo worth side dishes, just food and family. They'll be two plates missing from our table this year, Ian and my mom but we have the added blessing of a new face at our table, my new stepmom Frieda and what a blessing she has already proven to be to our little family.
I hope your Thanksgiving table will be full of blessings, love and shared memories - treat each other kindly, nobody knows what tomorrow holds.
