basketball head

He made it through the surgery...26 1/2 hours.  There was a lot more cancer in there than they knew.  They had to remove his upper palate and all of his teeth, as the cancer was all over.  I can’t even express how it was to walk into that very scary intensive care room with all the very scary machines beeping and breathing and clicking and see a man that I did not recognize at all.  His head was bigger than a basketball, his face so swollen and contorted you couldn’t even make sense of it, his mouth swollen and perpetually wide open and drooling.  He has staples every 1/4 inch from one ear, over his head, all the way to the other ear.  He has drains of fluid hanging from his spine, his temples, his neck.  He is breathing through a hole in his throat.  His eyes look like those of a scared, trapped animal awaiting its fate.  It’s all too big to make sense of.  My mom held me and whispered into my ear, “it’s still him, he’s still there” but I won’t believe that until he can tell us so.  The doctors say they got all the cancer, but now we just have to wait and see how he does.  More waiting.