family time

On Christmas night, about 20 minutes before the turkey was projected to hit the table, my son was bopping around the living room playing his prized clownfish-shaped electric guitar when suddenly he stopped and began to shriek and point to his privates. A closer look revealed one of his testicles to be swollen and red to a point that I was terrified meant testicular torsion, a situation where the testicle has rotated and constricted the connecting vessels, cutting off bloodflow.

Four hours later, I listened to a urologist explain that my son, now half-asleep on my shoulder watching The Incredibles on the overhead TV, had developed what's called a hydrocele. The pain had not returned, thankfully, and the specialist told me that hydroceles don't always require treatment, so although it looked like he was sporting a red Spaldeen down there, he advised we wait and see what happened over the next few weeks. The chief urologist told my wife in mid-January to wait another two months to again see if the swelling receded on its own. In March, the chief finally told us we should let him operate. Although I'd been hoping the issue could be resolved quickly, the thought of my three year old going under general anesthetic put my heart in my throat for two months until last Wednesday, the first available date for the procedure.

I scooped the boy up out of a sound sleep at 5:30 am, sat him in my wife's Volvo wagon and we took him to the children's hospital for a 6:30 call. Since he was the youngest scheduled that morning, he got the first slot and at 7:15, my wife walked him into pre-op to meet the anesthesiologist.

I sat in the waiting room expecting a ninety-minute wait. My wife read her paperback and I grabbed a five year old issue of Entertainment Weekly and read about their top 50 cult movies. At 9 am, I looked down the hall toward the post-op area to see if my son had been brought out.

Still not there at 9:05.

9:09.

9:15.

I took off my watch.

The waiting room flatscreens were running Cartoon Network, some manic flashing seizure-bait about seemingly hundreds of blobs with feet and faces named Mister (insert adjective). Mister Noisy. Mister Happy. Mister Rude. Mister Persnickety. And here I sat, Mister Internally-Boiling-Over. The staff that seemed so nice two hours ago now looked to me like they were intentionally moving in slow-motion. The aide who'd told us it was her job to tell us when our son was out of surgery sat at her desk doing paperwork. At indeterminate intervals, she'd stand up, dragging her slides, the flat heels slapping the floor with each shuffle, and buzz herself into the post-op area. I'd watch through the door's narrow inset window as she'd walk the length of the room, check in with the nurses, small talk a bit and shuffle on back through the door, making a hard left to her desk and resuming her paperwork. As she passed within view of the parents awaiting her glance, I wondered if she had trained herself to keep from looking in our direction during her travels.

A father with a tapered leather jacket and tight pants that made him look like he wanted to be a superhero sat down next to me, Blackberry fixed to his ear. From the effort he was making to be heard, my guess is he was trying to speak to someone on the other side of the planet. Underwater. And deaf. Still, he was there waiting on his child's surgery to finish just as the rest of us were, so he got a pass.

At 10 am I turned to look at the post-op area and didn't divert my gaze until I saw the chief urologist coming our way at 10:15. He told us the procedure went flawlessly, even with the addition of a correction for a hernia that was brewing with the other testicle, a problem we'd been warned a prolonged hydrocele could cause. They'd given him a spinal block afterward to help the pain throughout the day. All we had to do was wait for him to wake up.

Two hours later, Jack rolled over and whispered a weak hello. His voice was scratchy from the entubation. He was cranky and couldn't understand why he couldn't spring to his feet as he normally would after sleep. It would take the combination of Daddy, Mommy and a providentially-televised Scooby-Doo to get him calm enough to get dressed. I carried him down to the street, across to the garage and into the car. He was asleep within five blocks. My wife and I tucked him into his bed, dimmed the lights, stood in his doorway and watched him sleep.