Friday, April 30th, 2021

Declan Just Turned 6 Months Old

During rounds this morning, a team of docs wanted to make sure they were not missing anything prior to discharge. His high blood pressure has always been a concern, so an echocardiogram was ordered to look at his heart and an ultrasound of his kidneys to check structure was also ordered. Every single test this little guy had gone through always comes back normal and does not show any signs of anything. This little dude just refused to eat or got to a point where he was too uncomfortable to eat, and now that he was getting nutrition in him, he was starting to perk up! 

Jennifer had some meetings this day before noon, so I was present during his echocardiogram of his heart and everything looked good! Grandma came up for NG training. Things were all looking towards getting ready to go home! I took this as a sign to start getting the camper ready for the boys and grandma while we waited for discharge later that day. I headed home while Jennifer stayed with Declan and his kidney ultrasound. 

I packed up the truck and started driving towards our camper storage, feeling that this relaxing weekend ahead would be a comfort compared to the week we have spent overnight in uncomfortable hospital rooms. I was nearly to our camper, traveling along parker road when I got a call from Jennifer. It was expected though, the doctors were going to give us the results of the echocardiogram as well as the ultrasound of his kidneys. As the doctors started going over his echo, everything was normal (no surprise), as I rounded the next turn onto the dirt road leading to our RV and eventually our freedom from the hospital! It was during this time that the call took a more somber tone. 

Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

While going over his kidney ultrasound they had discussed seeing a mass on his right kidney. “a mass? What?” My head was spinning while I stayed pulled over on the side of a lonesome dirt road – alone – miles away from my wife and child, just itching to get back to my family. I quickly tell Jennifer I’m abandoning my mission to hitch up our RV, and high tail it back to the house to grab the van and make my way back to the hospital as fast as I can. This was an exceedingly difficult day, so many names and faces came in and out of our room. We met with folks from Oncology, various nurses, and many others. Everything was such a blur. We had the respite room for 2 days when we had first grabbed it. Jennifer got some sleep the first night, and now I was taking the 2^nd night to ugly cry myself to sleep and wait for the next day to see what we need to do for Declan moving forward. This… is our Day 0.