Thursday, July 23, 2009

A Call From The Doctor

So here's the deal...

We got some very unexpected news from the doctor the other day concerning our son, Tristan.

A few weeks ago we had taken him to Texas Children's Hospital to have a CAT scan of his chest. The reason is, he has a condition know as "Pigeon Chest" where the sternum and ribs have some sort of calcium malformation, or something like that. It basically makes the middle of his chest poke out further than it should and can cause some difficulty breathing. It's not terribly common, but it is repairable with a surgical procedure done by a pediatric surgeon. It's mostly a "cosmetic" disorder.
At any rate, Tristan is embarrassed of it, and we wanted to see if we could have something done about it.

Well, Amy got a phone call from the doctor's assistant last Friday. She wanted to talk about the scan. Of course, she was glad to hear from her and asked if we would be able to get his chest taken care of.
The assistant seemed a little confused by this and said, "Has anyone called you yet?"
No, she was the first person we had spoken to since the scan.
"Oh" she say, "Umm, ok, well there seems to be a problem, are you sure no one has called you yet?"
"Nooo?"
"Ok, then I should tell you now."
"It appears that Tristan has several spots in his lungs... pulmonary lesions. There are quite a few, I count about 12. We need to get him seen by the doctor ASAP, however, the doctor is on vacation for two weeks out of country. Ok, I'm going to call the doctor now and let him know. He'll want to know this."

Needless to say this freaked Amy right out. So she shot off a few frantic questions like, what are pulmonary lesions? What does this mean? Will he need surgery? What does this mean? We want to be seen NOW!

Apparently, the lesions can be caused by a number of things, and until the doc actually sees the scans and does a biopsy, they won't know if they're malignant or not. She told us to call our pediatrician to get them up to speed on what was happening.
Amy did all that and then called back. The assistant looked at the scans again, and recounted. She said it looked like 5 definite lesions(I don't know why the number changed) in each of his lungs. She said some were operable, some were not... I don't know what THAT means either.
We're basically pulling our hair out at this point.
She said that she would have us seen as soon as the doctor gets back in country.

The day before yesterday, Amy called back and they have us scheduled for an appointment on the day the doc comes back to work, next Wednesday. I've taken the day off so I can be there for whatever news we get.

We're scared and we really don't know what to do at this point except wait.
We haven't told Tristan or anyone else for that matter... We don't know how...
Should we just let the doc tell him when we get there, or should I break the news to him on the way there? We DEFINITELY don't want to tell him now because all he will do is worry and fret. Nothing good can come of that right now.
It's gotta be our burden to bear until next week.

Pray for us.


KoP