TEN
PRAYERS OF A MOST UNUSUAL KIND
For another week after the emergency appendectomy, Colton continued to
throw up, and we continued to pump poison out of his body twice a day
using Dr. O’Holleran’s rigging of plastic tubing and grenades. Slowly,
gradually, Colton took a turn for the better. The upchucking stopped, his
color returned, and he began to eat a little. We knew he was on the mend
when he began to sit up and chat with us, play with the video game console
the nurses had stationed at his bed, and even take an interest in the brand-
new stuffed lion that Cassie had brought him several days before. Finally,
seven days after we checked in to the hospital in North Platte, the medical
team said we could take our son home.
Like soldiers after a long but victorious fight, Sonja and I were both
exhausted and overjoyed. On March 13, we packed up all the debris of a
lengthy hospital stay in a hodgepodge of shopping bags, duffel bags, and
plastic bags and headed for the elevators, me pushing Colton in a
wheelchair and Sonja holding a thick bouquet of going-home balloons.
The elevator doors had begun sliding shut when Dr. O’Holleran
appeared in the hallway and literally yelled for us to stop. “You can’t go!
You can’t go!” His voice echoed in the tile corridor as he waved a sheaf of
paper in our direction. “We’ve still got problems!”
A last-minute blood test had revealed a radical spike in Colton’s white
cell count, Dr. O’Holleran told us when he caught up to us at the elevator.
“It’s probably another abscess,” he said. “We may have to operate again.”
I thought Sonja was going to pass out right there. Both of us were
walking zombies by then and had nearly reached our limit. Colton burst into
tears.
Another CT scan revealed new pockets of infection in Colton’s
abdomen. That afternoon, Dr. O’Holleran and his surgical team had to
open up our little boy a second time and clean him out again. This time,
Sonja and I weren’t terrified; the shadow of death had long since passed
from Colton’s face. But now we had a new worry: Colton hadn’t eaten for