Real Priorities, Real Hope

When a friend or relative is sick, priorities seem to really line up the way they should. With all the things happening in the media with celebrities and political figures, it is interesting and often we get quite caught up in all of it. When something is happening right in front of you, however, it really does wake you up to real priorities.

I made a post on June 20, 2009 about health care and a good friend, Fidel. He is, frankly, more like family. He treats me like a little sister and I think the world of him and his girlfriend, Melissa, who is also a good friend. I started writing a piece tonight chronicling everything he has gone through since it all started. It is hard to think back and realize the magnitude of it all up to this point. Fidel only saw blurry and foggy days, never sunny ones.

What started as us thinking he only had blurry vision and that he just needed glasses, turned into a brain tumor that the doctors think may have been growing for decades. First there was the initial surgery which was to be simple: a pituitary adenoma that was to be taken out through his nose. Less invasive, they said. Still didn't sound fun and he - and the rest of us - were scared, but hopeful that they could get it all. As it turned out, the surgeons were only able to get twenty percent of it out. To hear a doctor say it was "too bloody" was a bit frightening. A second, much more serious and invasive surgery followed. Brain surgery. He woke up the next day from the first surgery. He still has not woken up from the second one.

Since this time, and the surgeries, MRI's, CAT scans...all the tubes and wires he was hooked up to...and weeks in Intensive Care, he finally was pronounced stable and moved to a regular hospital room. There for a few days, he was then moved to a rehabilitation hospital where he now sleeps peacefully, with a few more reactions each day. His eyes are opened more. He crunches up his face when a cloth is run across it to clean it. But he is still asleep. Deep asleep.

We know these things take time. As my sister, an RN, said: "They don't wake up like they do in the movies. It is a slow process." We want him to take whatever time he needs to wake up. But we all miss him - his smile, his laugh, his wonderful sense of humor. The world is a little less bright with Fidel so quiet.

We don't know what the future will bring. But we know one thing for sure: it will bring us back Fidel. And no matter what it takes or what he needs, we will help him. It may take some time, but he will be come back to us. And when he does, not only will he be healthy again, but the world won't be blurry or foggy anymore through his eyes. And, as for the rest of us, our eyes too will see a much brighter sun shining through.