Part 22
"Healed"

Beep...beep...beep...

"Cliff? Cliff, can you hear me?" My eyes opened and I was lying in a hospital bed. My chest was throbbing and my body was weak. I was connected to a couple of machines. As I looked around I saw my mom and dad standing by my legs, smiling. There was a nurse at my right side. "Cliff, in your hand is a button. If you are in a lot of pain, push it and it will inject you with pain killer." She pushed it for me once and I heard a noise that sounded like a soda fountain come from next to me. "Cliff", my mom said, "they got it all out. It's all over now." My parents were smiling at me, happy that it was all over. I would have smiled too, but it hurt too much too. "Your brothers are here too", my dad said. In walked Joe and Isaiah. They looked at me and all the hospital equipment I was hooked up to and said, "Hi Cliffy." In the last couple of months I had played a lot of video games with my brothers, so I said the first thing that popped into my head, "did you bring the Nintendo?" Everyone laughed. "Kelly's also here", my mom said. I looked to the end of my bed and my friend Kelly was smiling at me. I waved at her and dosed off for a second. I was still pretty drugged up.

Here's what went on while I was out:

After I was knocked out, the doctors wheeled me into the surgery room. I passed out with my Coltrane/Hartman CD in my lap. After prepping me for the surgery (by connecting me to different machines), the doctors opened up my rib cage. There was the tumor, right there on my heart. Except, this wasn?t the same tumor that they saw in the CAT scan several months earlier. That tumor was the size of a large grapefruit and was filled with fluid. This tumor was small and hard, about the size of a mandarin orange. Unlike the doctor?s prediction, the tumor wasn't connected to any lung. It wasn?t connected to any major arteries. And it wasn't in my heart. This new tumor was connected to a layer of fatty tissue on the outside of my heart. This fatty tissue is there to protect the heart. You can live without it though. Dr. Froines went in and cut out that layer of tissue, and the connecting tumor. Nothing else. It was the best possible way the surgery could have taken place. After they removed it, they wrapped up the tumor for further investigation, and sealed me back up.

After Dr. Froines main job was over, he went out to speak with the family. He called for my parents to meet with him in a room. My parents went, along with about a dozen other family and friends. The whole heard crowded into the tiny room to hear the news. The doctor told them that I was OK. The surgery went great. They could see me in a little bit up in my "general care" room. Yeah, I didn't have to stay in ICU for days. They put me in a regular old hospital room. Everyone in the room rejoiced and thanked God for healing me from cancer.

Back in the room, I woke up after a couple minute nap. My chest was in a lot of pain. It felt like I had just been cut open with "the Jaws of Life"...oh wait, I HAD. I pushed my handy dandy button a couple of times to ease the pain. I forget if my parents were talking to me or not, I was more drugged up than Jimmy Hendrix at a New Years party. I saw that there were pink tubes coming out from under my blankets. I wonder what those are? There was also a yellow tube coming out from under my blanket. Hmmmm? A few minutes later, a couple of nurses came into the room. They had to get a x-ray of my chest. Normally, this is an easy thing to do, but for someone who had just had chest surgery, this would be a little hard. In order to take the x-ray, the nurses had to place a board (I'm not sure what it is made of) under my back. I pushed my button again for good luck. One of the nurses counted to three, and on three he helped me do a half sit-up while the other nurse slid the board under my back. This may sound easy but it hurt like crazy. They moved the camera (which was connected to a swivel on the ceiling) over my chest and took a picture. Next they had to take the board out from under my back. The nurse counted to three again, and again I did an assisted half sit-up. Ouch!!! After they were done, the rest of my family came back in the room to say "hi". Just to say it again, I was pretty drugged up at the time, but if I remember correctly, mama & papa, grandma, and Heidi all came into the room to greet me. I don't remember exactly what they said but I do remember that each one of them was smiling from ear to ear.

Later on that evening, Dr. Froines came into the room. From the first time I met Dr. Froines, he was a pretty unpretentious kind of guy. He didn't smile much and he didn't show a lot of emotion about anything. I heard that during the Seattle Mariners 1995 pennant winning game he didn't even clap once (just joking). As you know, the doctors had taken my tumor for further investigation. They had to open it up and see if there were any cancer cells left in it. If there were any, I would have to go back under chemotherapy to try and kill off the remaining cells. This would not be good. When doctor Froines came into the room he wasn't his usual self. He bounced in the room with a huge smile on his face. He told us, "we opened up the tumor and found no cancer cells. You're done." My mom shouted, "Hallelujah!" She looked at me drugged out in my bed and asked, "Aren't you happy Cliff?" I was happy, but I was so drugged up that I couldn't really show it. I did look at Dr. Froines standing by my right foot and said, "thank you." It was finally over.

Now all I have to do is get out of this hospital bed...

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