39. All About Tim — (Part Two)
Nine years after I had my brain surgery, this happened. It was a Sunday afternoon and Tim decided he needed a new pair of work shoes. He always had luck finding ones that looked good and provided the support he needed at the Greendale Mall, so off he went for a little shoe shopping.
On the way home Mr. Wonderful was in a fender-bender on Park Avenue — not to worry — his awesome shoes were bubble-wrapped, tucked inside a cardboard box and resting comfortably on the floor whilst his body was taking the full impact of the hit. The young girl operating a vehicle and texting a message didn’t realize my beloved had stopped for a red light.
The attempted murderer did enough damage to the back end of our car that a police officer suggested Tim go to the ER by ambulance. The dude I’m married to (the one I think I’ll describe as the dumbass I’m married to) came home instead and within a few hours he could barely move his head from side to side, so off we went to get him checked out at the aforementioned ER.
Some background info. Tim had major back surgery when he was 18 and has two Harrington Rods that run the length of his spinal cord. So, to those of you who’ve wondered if the ‘really nice’ guy goes toe to toe with his strong-willed wife — he does — and he’s quite successful since his spine is shored up with two steel rods.
So. There.
Even though he was only complaining of neck pain, Tim was sent for a CT scan because the medical team wanted to check his steel rods and spine. Everything seemed fine and he was sent on his merry way. A week later he received a registered letter (on a weekend) from the radiology department at the hospital saying he needed to get in touch with Dr. Wonderful.
On Monday, the physician who’s been at the center of a lot of O’Brien shit over the past 15+ years told Tim to come into the office for a discussion. In case you are unaware, when a physician suggests you have a face-to-face discussion — it is never a good thing and you should prepare yourself accordingly.
As it turned out, Tim O’Brien had a brain tumor.
Bet a few of you just said, WTF!
Cause we did!
A pituitary adenoma showed up on Mr. Wonderful’s CT scan. Thankfully, the typical X-ray prescribed for most whiplash-likely-patients was upped to a CT scan for Tim. Otherwise the tumor would have gone unnoticed.
So here we go again.
Nine years to the same month, with the same neurosurgical team, Mr. Wonderful underwent surgery to remove a pituitary adenoma. There wasn’t going to be an opening and closing of his cranium to get the grape-sized tumor out — and since I’m still skeeved about the surgical procedure he had, I’m gonna let you search the internet to read about it for yourselves — while I jump to the fun period, the one immediately following his two-hour surgery.
Unfortunately, Tim’s procedure was delayed seven hours because the surgical team was called in for an emergency situation. And since we’d already been separated, and he’d been prepped for surgery, Tim was alone in the pre-surgical area that entire time. While the patient waited impatiently he said he was getting concerned that his ‘team’ might be too tired when they finally got to him. Then he remembered the chief neurosurgeon worked on me for 24 hours, so my mate relaxed a bit.
I, on the other hand, spent those hours in a waiting room reading decades-old People Magazines — some with celeb wedding announcements, and others announcing divorce proceedings were already underway for the no-longer-happy couples. Worst of all, I was forced by my girls to help with a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle they grabbed from a shelf of puzzles I’d hope they wouldn’t see.
They saw. They conspired. They tortured me.
For the record, I. HATE. JIGSAW. PUZZLES. The only puzzles I find any enjoyment in doing are the kind two year old kids do, the ones with the knob on top of thick cardboard pieces, and there’s like five pictures of farm animals, or modes of transportation, or types of fruits. You put the five pieces in, clap happily with the smiling tot and be done with it.
The takeaway from this ramble is that Mama wasn’t happy with the seven hour wait or with her husband’s children.
As soon as Tim was taken to recovery – I was tracked down by the two neurosurgeons — Dr. Miracle who painstakingly removed my big-ass tumor and Tim’s little-ass tumor — and the less miraculous doctor who neglected to close my cranium. I guess I’m still a bit bitter about the whole drip, drip, drip of brain fluid — oh well.
Anyway, before the men in surgical garb had a chance to say bye bye to me, Dr. Miracle got paged to Tim’s bedside — apparently, the surgical patient who was medicated heavily so he wouldn’t move his head — was sitting upright, vomiting his guts out because he was having an allergic reaction to morphine. By the way, sitting upright and retching was absolutely not part of the post-op plan. Concerned about a brain fluid drip or some other complication, Tim was whisked off to the ICU.
He was stabilized incrementally as the effects of the morphine lessened, and when I was finally allowed to see him, it was after 3 AM. His surgery had been scheduled for 9 AM and I’d kept his family apprised about the delay, but by early evening the shit hit the fan and so the news hit the airwaves.
One awesome thing about the OBs — because there are so many of them, there’s a family call tree. So, all I had to do was call Person A who called Person B who called Person C. Within a matter of days — because there’s like 973 of them — everyone got caught up to speed. And because Tim has two sisters who are nurses, all I had to do was say a few medical terms I heard from Tim’s doctor, and they took it from there. They gave me a thumbnail of the situation, maybe suggested a few questions for me to ask, then made their plans to get their asses to the ICU to find out for themselves what was going on — which ended up being a blip on the medical screen when the real shit hit the fan.
A couple days after that incident, Tim was sent home. Within two days of his return, things went from moderately okay to, “You should bring him in for a checkup.” Dr. Miracle took one look and sent Tim by ambulance back to the ICU where he spent six days, and then another handful of days on the ‘regular’ hospital floor.
Tim developed something called diabetes insipidus, an uncommon disorder that causes an imbalance of fluids in the body. It’s not related to type 1 or 2 diabetes because it has nothing to do with sugar levels.
Diabetes insipidus causes an imbalance of bodily fluids which demands a high volume of fluids going in and coming out. Almost drop by drop the in-fluids and the out-fluids (delete: going into Tim and coming out) were measured. There is no cure for diabetes insipidus, but focused treatment can help get fluids back in line.
My understanding is that a healthy adult outputs 1 to 2 quarts of urine per day — Tim was outputting 20 quarts per day and that significant increase causes an imbalance in the blood for things like: sodium, and potassium, which leads to weakness, imbalance, and confusion. Tim had them all, in a very big way.
All in all, Mr. Wonderful spent two weeks in the hospital for what should have been a one night, post-op observational stay.
When my 6’2” man finally returned home to stay put, he was as weak as a lamb, and acted as though he had a few bats in his belfry. He’d leave bed for a quick bathroom trip, and I’d find him many minutes later sitting outside on a lawn chair, under a tree, on his barren lawn, wearing his pajama bottoms.
I’d grab my cane for balance and do the vertigo-wobble to him. And there we’d be — outside — before dawn: Mr. and Mrs. Wonderfully Looney, with he in his bottoms and me in my nightgown asking, “What ’cha doin?” He’d stay silent for many minutes then shrug a shoulder. He did enough of these wacky trips that the first question people asked when they checked in on Tim was, “Where’d you find him this morning?”
If I hadn’t already been given an expiration date for this whole cancer crap, Tim might consider offing me for this blog, but I figure his brush with a critical health issue and the fact that both of Hannah’s and Jessica’s parents had head tumors — was worth the risk of mentioning it.
It took a few weeks for him to get back on sure footing, and to keep his ass inside the house until he was fully dressed. The experience pushed me into Mama Bear mode. I found ways to cope with things on my own, and to put on a brave face out in the world — particularly at hospitals — when I really felt like withdrawing. And I spent time taking care of the guy who’d done so much for me over the years.
We spent the next three years living a normal and uneventful life and then the shit hit the fan.