Rob’s been asking me for awhile now to be a guest blogger on his site. I feel that he always has the best words, and is certainly far more entertaining than I am, so I’ve yet to take him up on this offer. Until now, because this post is about him.
You see, it seems that we now have an annual tradition for each November to bring forth turkey, stuffing, and major surgery. Last Thanksgiving he was recovering from reconstructive shoulder surgery after his scooter accident.
On Thanksgiving Day this year, Rob had part 3 of a root canal procedure. He called me from the dentist’s office because the dentist found something on his X-ray that they felt needed to be addressed at the hospital. Of course this worried me because it accompanied bad translations like “blood clot,” and “hospital, now.” It wasn’t a blood clot, but it wasn’t just a cloudy tooth either. A full day and a CT scan later, I get this text:
Okay, so yes I worry a lot. My mind immediately went to cancer. Because large grey growth that isn’t supposed to be there is scary. See that large grey circle where the arrow is? Yup. See why I was worried?
I’ll go ahead and get to the good ending now. it wasn’t cancer. But it was a full week of worry and recovering from surgery before we found that out. He was admitted to the hospital the next day, and they ran all sorts of tests on him for two days prior to his surgery date: more CTs of his heart, lungs, other organs, etc., more bloodwork, an EKG in which they had to shave his chest and wrists, endoscopies, of course COVID, etc. … all to rule out “other possibilities.” Oh, and because surgery was to be in the facial area he had to shave most of his beard. While doing that, I also had a COVID test done so I could get permission to visit him in the hospital. Thankfully, it only takes one day for results to come back here, so I got to visit on day 2. I was quickly greeted by a nurse upon my arrival who was eager to tell me to go buy him a proper nose hair remover because his nose hair was not up to surgical standards. I looked at her like, ‘say what now?’ Yes, she gave me a piece of paper with “nose hair remover” written in Chinese and told me to go find the store near another little store where they could give me one. I did not walk in to the right store at first, but a kind man directed me to the nose hair remover store, and Rob successfully got his nose hair to appropriate surgical length.
In order to have that thing removed they had to put him under general anesthesia and take it out through his nose. They also sent some of it out for a biopsy. Here he is right after:
When we did a video call with him the day after surgery Abby started crying because she was shocked by his black eye and bloody nose. His nose continued to bleed non-stop all week.
Throughout the rest of the week Rob endured a few more painful sinus endoscopies to remove surgery padding, clean out the surgical site, and put fresh dissolvable padding inside his face- wondering each day when he would be released from the hospital.
Meanwhile, I was only able to visit him twice this week because I got so incredibly sick with flu-like symptoms and was down for the count at home. I’m sure it was from the stress of it all. So I won’t be able to tell you all of the fun details of being in a Chinese hospital for a week. I’ll leave that up to him. I know it wasn’t fun. Finally, he was cleared to come home today! Although we don’t have official biopsy results yet, the doctors have told him from all the other tests and from everything they see, the growth looks to be benign.
So as usual, the Statons come out of situations like this on top. I feel like we’ve been able to prove time and time again we are resilient, so I’m not sure why these reminders need to keep popping up. Nonetheless, we endure. And this Thanksgiving, even though we had to cancel our little dinner, and postpone putting up the Christmas tree, it kicks off the Christmas season with an extra sprinkle of thankfulness for each other. I have a poster in my office that says “Nothing is worth more than this day.” It’s true friends. Now go hug your loved one.
