Читать книгу The Twinkling of an Eye - Sue Brown - Страница 13

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us, we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

– Letters of C.S. Lewis by C.S. Lewis

____________________________

It is late afternoon when Craig is transferred to the almost empty paediatric ward. He is wheeled into his own, sunny room, and immediately sets about charming his flurry of sympathetic nurses with stories of persistent proposals from his friend’s sister – perhaps more survival tactics to escape his anxiety.

‘We will have to put a restraining order on her!’ declares Nurse Crystal. She is rewarded with a broad grin from the right side of Craig’s face, but the marked droop on the left makes me feel desperate for him.

Having completed a lengthy operation upstairs, our tired-looking neurosurgeon quietly enters the room sometime later. Dr Farrier is slightly built with fair, straight hair, glasses and something of the contained presence I remember in his father.

He nods an acknowledgement at Neil and me, but he directs his gentle greeting at his patient, who looks up anxiously from his pillow on the bed’s raised head. While he quietly appraises Craig’s clinical condition in the context of the scan’s results, I sense that he has been briefed by the radiologist.

He picks up the large, white envelope lying at the foot of the bed, untouched – I have been too afraid to open it.

Sliding out the plates, he holds them to the light. I perch on an armrest. My legs might not hold me if this doctor tells us there’s nothing he can do.

Standing out plainly, in stark contrast to grey shades of healthy brain tissue, is a white, golf-ball-sized shape – somewhere near the middle of Craig’s head, and just to the right.

The doctor nods gently, calmly turning to Craig to say: ‘You have a tumour here, and I am going to need to do an operation to get it out. Is that okay with you?’

Nodding slowly in response to this respectful request, my son’s sage reply is: ‘Yes ... this thing has caused me a lot of trouble.’

Leaving Craig to enjoy the warm and friendly attentions of the New Year’s Eve nurses, Neil and I step out with Dr Farrier to the parents’ room. The room is marked by a circle of black La-Z-Boy armchairs, worn brown carpet and a faint smell of souring milk – perhaps forgotten in the little fridge by other parents once their own, lonely wait was over.

The surgeon slumps heavily into his chair opposite the two of us.

The tumour is 4–5 cm across, he says. It is not possible to say how long it has been there, but he would guess two years – at least. My own head is processing this information very slowly: I voice the silly question – would this account for Craig’s behavioural problems and deteriorating schoolwork?

Dr Farrier patiently replies he is actually surprised at the level of functioning Craig has managed to maintain.

In addition to exerting pressure on the brain, the tumour has more recently obstructed the flow of the cerebrospinal fluid – the liquid that bathes the brain – at the place where it should be able to drain away from the third ventricle. He shows us this darkly distended ventricle, pointing out how much bigger it is than the same, healthy space to the left.

This fluid build-up has caused enough pressure to shift the dark midline between Craig’s brain hemispheres towards the left. Two recent, small bleeds from the growing tumour would have caused the sudden headaches and vomiting.

I feel guilty about being so angry with my son over his behaviour. But I also recognise in myself a twisted relief – finally I understand what is wrong with my son; that he is not a horrible child, on the contrary, a desperately ill one.

Based on the information Dr Farrier received from the radiologist, he had initially braced himself for an emergency shunt operation – to relieve the pressure caused by fluid accumulation on the brain. But on assessing a no-longer-vomiting and rather cheerful patient, Dr Farrier prescribes high doses of cortisone syrup instead, until the tumour removal can be performed. And, when he learns he can have his supper, a hungry Craig cheers up.

The proposed surgery, we are cautioned, will require two neurosurgeons and specially trained theatre staff – a tall order during the festive season. The tumour is tucked away at the furthest reaches from the surgical instruments’ capability – in the ‘tiger country’ of the brain, as I’ve heard it called.

Picturing my son’s unopened head, I want to know where he will be cut.

‘Just above his fringe on the right.’

The surgeon answers our questions in the haphazard order that they occur to us, and patiently waits for each answer to sink in before moving ahead.

‘We go down between the two hemispheres of the brain, until we reach the mid-brain, where the tumour is. There will be some inevitable damage to the fibres that connect the two sides. This will affect his coordination. I cannot get to the mid-brain without also damaging the right-side motor fibres, which control the movement of Craig’s left arm and leg. I cannot predict the extent of this weakness.’

Our final question is the crucial: ‘What type of tumour do you think it is?’

Dr Farrier mentions two possible names, both of which my own brain stubbornly refuses to register. It hears, clings to, only the ‘hopefully benign’ bit at the end.

I remain alone for a while in the parents’ room once Dr Farrier and Neil go back to Craig.

In tears for the first time since guessing what was wrong a day ago – a whole lifetime ago – I want to compose myself. I don’t want to frighten my child anymore.

Neil heads back to the world outside, collecting Meg from his parents and beginning the unenviable task of passing on the devastating news to our family and friends. I am allowed to stay with Craig, cocooning myself with him in this contained space. I am given a fold-out bed that adjoins his, and we watch (or rather look at – our minds are elsewhere) an animated movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, on the little TV screen, until he falls fast asleep.

I am woken at 2 am by the nurses coming in to do his observations, and hear the faraway crack of celebratory fireworks. We have now entered the year 2011; one utterly without the familiar demarcations by which we have navigated until now.

At breakfast time the doctor comes to check on Craig, and is satisfied that he has had no more headaches or vomiting.

I ask the doctor if he has had any rest, at which he half-smiles. Not really. Someone had dived into an empty swimming pool during the revels of the night. He had even received a call about a patient in Beaufort West, some 425 km away, from a medic who had heard, or hoped, that he was the neurosurgeon on duty for the entire Western Cape province.

How fortunate we are to be so close to, and able to access, the very best medical care.

I note this surgeon’s hands, at rest on Craig’s medical charts, which hold the possibility of my child’s survival – and I am in awe of his ability to cope, on a 24-hour basis, with the constant stream of life and death crises, of which ours is merely one.