Saturday morning I woke up to Justin on the living room floor, breathing but not responsive. He was moaning as if in pain and there was a little blood coming out of his nose and mouth. I was scared to death, mainly because I couldn't get him to respond. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I knew it was more than I could handle, so I called 911.
Once the police, firemen and EMTs were in the living room with us, he began to look around and slowly became more aware of himself. They got him to sit up and answer some simple questions. He took a ride to a local hospital, where they began to do a simple battery of tests. As the morning wore on, he became more and more like himself, although he couldn't remember anything from about 1:30AM on, nor why he was at the hospital.
Jason and Tammy were with me, and we began to try to figure out what happened. We recalled that he had been behaving differently for a few weeks; nothing too unusual, but not like Justin. He had complained that he was unable to sleep very well due to a racing heart, and he was having what he called "panic attacks." He also said his tongue was swollen. Jason had convinced Justin to go to the doctor on Friday due to the symptoms, and the doctor found that his thyroid was enlarged. He gave him some beta blocker for the racing heart, did some blood tests and said he would contact him on Monday with the results. Little did any of us know how much we would learn about Justin before then...
Justin was on the gurney in the ER and there were some physical issues that were not good. His face and eyelids appeared swollen and he had little broken capillaries all over his face. The scariest part was that both eyes had hemorrhages in them, so where the whites of his eyes were supposed to be, there was blood instead. I see this at work and knew there are various causes for this, but had never seen a case anywhere near this bad. Somewhere, somehow he was having some pressure issues.
One by one, the test results came back fine. His blood pressure was fine, even a bit low. His blood sugar was normal, thyroid levels were all fine. This doctor couldn't find anything wrong with him. He thought maybe it was a reaction to the beta blocker from the day before, but the symptoms were there before the first doctor prescribed them. Because they couldn't find any problems, they were planning to release Justin! I was shocked. The doctor said they had a certain protocol and that they hadn't found anything, so they had no reason to keep him there. I looked at the doctor and told him that there WAS something wrong. Just looking at Justin's face told me that he had some major problems. The doctor looked sympathetic but didn't have any reason to keep him. I finally reminded him of the enlarged thyroid and he admitted he hadn't actually looked at it yet. As soon as he felt it, he looked surprised at it's size. He said that it was bigger than he thought. He stood there a minute and finally said there were a few more tests he could do. He ordered a CT scan on the thyroid and left. I was relieved that he kept Justin there and told Jason and Tammy that if they had released him, I would have driven him right to another hospital.
Soon the doctor came back and said the thyroid was blocking Justin's airway. He said there was an Internal doctor there that suggested they do another CT scan, this time on his head, to see if there was possible bleeding in his head. As we were waiting, Justin began to sort of "zone out" and look sideways in a weird way. I asked him if he was OK, and he looked at me like he didn't even know me, so I ran for the nurse. The nurse watched him and tried to get his attention, but for a few minutes he was just "out of it." The nurse went right in to the doctor's office. By the time Justin went for the CT scan, he seemed to be OK again.
Very quickly after the 2nd CT scan, the doctor sat down. He took a big breath and said, "well, you have 2 tumors in your head. One is in the frontal lobe, and the other is behind it. We don't have the ability to deal with this here, so we want you to get to Iowa City. Since you had that episode a little while ago, we are going to send you by ambulance. They will be here shortly."
WHAT? Surely he was not speaking to us. He had the wrong room or the wrong person or something. It took me a minute to figure out what he was saying. And even then I had mixed emotions; relief that we were right and there was something wrong, but fear from what that meant.
The doctor left the room and we all looked at each other. We got up and went to Justin's bedside. Jason said, "we have to pray!" And we did.
In a few minutes, I asked Justin what he was thinking. He said, "well, I guess it answers some questions." How true.
Jason bent over Justin's bed and gave him a big hug. Justin said, "I wasn't your's first, I was God's first. Don't be sad." We all just broke down and cried.
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