Fright of your life October 31st

The day had finally come. The big surgery that would fix all the issues. Replace the metal plate in his jaw, cure the infection. Thursday, October 31st, Kenny went into surgery. The surgeons told us it would be at least a six-hour surgery. In pre-op, one of the surgeons mentioned that there were changes in Kenny's mouth and the wound was open where the transplant bone was. They told us they would do biopsies in the operating room before they proceeded with the big surgery. Kenny was wheeled off, and I was left to wait it out. About an hour and a half into the surgery, I got the text update saying, "The patient is in the recovery room." I was shocked. I had run home to get some things and was not at the hospital. Soon, I received a call from the surgeon. She delivered the news. When they went to intubate Kenny, they found lesions in his throat and mouth. They biopsied six areas in his mouth and throat and the open wound on his neck that has never healed these past months. It was all cancer. I rushed back to the hospital and went to the recovery room. The doctor came in to repeat everything she had said to me for Kenny's benefit. She very matter-of-factly explained

that while they had never seen any evidence of cancer visually before and none of the recent CT scans showed it, it was back in a bad way. She said no operation could be done as there was obviously cancer in the transplant bone and if they tried to remove the metal plate, they would "seed cancer" around his neck from the size of the incision that was necessary to perform the surgery. It didn't quite register what she was saying. I asked about infection. She said we just had to consider it all cancer now. It soon became clear she was saying death was not only possible but likely. There were not a lot of options. The nurses in recovery were so kind and comforting as we sat there listening to this horror. Kenny very calmly taking it in and me attempting while blubbering to come up with coherent questions. She told us to go home. Talk to our kids. Come back on Tuesday, and she would talk to us more about options. We spent that weekend telling our kids. We told the oldest three first, then the middle boys. I told Bowie, our baby, on Saturday morning. He sobbed and kept repeating, "but I'm only 11. I need my Dad." Me too kiddo. I need him too.

Bowie Christmas 2023

I thought the last ten months had been hell. The surgery, the recovery, the infections and hospital trips. Kenny has been through so much. It was so very cruel. The days passed very slowly as we waited for our appointment with the surgeon to hear our options.