To Iowa City in an Ambulance

The ambulance arrived too soon, and they wouldn't let me ride along. So they took Justin alone, which was very hard for me--I wanted to be with him so bad. Jason, Tammy and I went to my place to trade cars, grab some stuff and get to Iowa City. It seemed like a long trip; praying, crying, trying to resolve what was going on, taking and making phone calls. It was really hard. We found that the worst part was the unknown. We all felt maybe he wouldn't live, and that was hard. I told God that I didn't want to play tug-of-war with Him. If He wanted Justin, I would not fight, although saying that is much easier than living it.

As soon as we arrived, we were taken right to the ER where the ambulance dropped him off. I noticed right away that his eyes were worse and puffy, his face was darker and redder, and there was blood by his mouth again. It came to me then, and was soon confirmed by the doctors that Justin had been suffering through some seizures, and had one in the ambulance on the way. I got really emotional then. The sore tongue, the rapid heart rate, the panic, the blood. My baby had been really sick and no one even knew...even he didn't know. We questioned each other about the symptoms that he had; when did we begin to see these? Poor guy. My heart just went out to him--knowing something was wrong, but not knowing. The neurosurgeons came in right away to explain to us what they were seeing. They put us at ease right away, "this is what we do, you are in the right place." They wanted an MRI done, but didn't know if they could get the staffing on a Saturday night. Bless her heart, a young gal came in just for Justin, so he had it done in just a few hours of his arrival.

We also had a visit from the head and neck doctors, who put a tiny camera down Justin's nose and took a look at his airway. The doctor said it was not very big and the thyroid was what was making it that way. They ordered a biopsy for Monday morning.

At about 6:45 Sunday morning, the doctors came in--in a group. The results of the MRI were in and they found Justin has one tumor, called a low-grade glioma. It is cancer, but it is very slow growing and not as invasive as some, so there were several options from surgery to doing nothing for now. They were more concerned with the thyroid being so large and making his airway small. The head and neck doctors will know more after the biopsy.With so much more information, we didn't feel such panic.