Birmingham and The Nuffer's

Birmingham is quite a large city located in southern Alabama. It has become in the last 20 years a beacon of excellent healthcare in the southeast. At first thought it was quite scary for me to even think of such a place and my boy at the same time. However the two met and spent time together this past spring. And here is their story.....
Flash backwards to fall 2008...My boy Jerry is 16 and having a blast with life. He hunts, he fishes, he 4 wheels, he just loves living life and especially now spending time with his buddy Jake on his Mom and Dad's property of 160 acres of prime high and dry Florida land. This place is located in Holms county Florida. That is about ah hrs ride thru Reservation land as the crow flys. The regular route would be about an hr and forty fiveish. Jerry lives for the weekends and heading out to "the property" as it has become known. They spend all weekend just hanging out and doing all of the above, he loves it. About last Oct-Nov Jake started noticing that Jerry was snoring much more than usual, it bacame a joke to see where everyone was going to sleep to get furtherest away from him. I guess I noticed it some too but as he always has allergies or asthma symptoms I didn't think much of it. He did seem more sickly than usual but I tell you just to get him to sit still long enough to sifer him out was a hard thing to do. So he lived on nose spray and cough drops and the occasional inhaler when it got real bad. About feb. he had a nasty cold that would not budge and this went into March and finally I got him to go to the Doc. The Doc. said it looked like strep to him and we would do a raapid strep test. It came back positive about 30 mins later. When we went back in he said he thought he saw something else in his back throat and into the windpipe area but it could just be swelling. He would check it out in 3 weeks after he finished all the antibiotics. All the while his snoring was just awful, so now I figured it must be all the allergies and now the infection too that had made all of this happen. We did go back and the swelling was gone and yes it did apear to be "something" rather large back there. Doc directed to us to the ENT Doc over in Fort Walton Beach. We went on over in a few weeks, I think this was now April. Well he looked and yes he saw something and we had to have a look. He sprayed stuff down Jerry's throat and it numbed things up and then he stuck a very long tube down his nose and throat that had a camera on it. The screen came up on the wall and it was facinating to me. poor Jerry did not think so but was doing ok. And there it was... a huge monster growth that was consuming almost all of his airway. I felt really sick and scared and anxious and everything else you could think of. Doc took many pictures and then removed the tube. He looked at and said Jerry has a massive growth that is cutting off his airway. That is why he has been snoring so much and not eating. It hurts to swallow. OMG lights, sirens, bells, whistles all went off in my head at the same time. He continued....I am sending Jerry for an MRI and bloodwork. Ok...I can stay calm I can act like this is an everyday thing on the outside....on the inside I am screaming at myself DUMMY it has been there all this time and I never caught on or paid attention to what I was hearing and seeing...Such as Mom I am not really hungry tonite i'll just have a bite or two. Then I noticed all the weight he was loosing but he is a big boy anyway so I was glad he was loosing weight and was just cutting back. I never knew he could not get the food chewed enough to break it down enough to swallow without it hurting. That apt was like a Wed and his MRI was Monday. He also had the bloodwork done that day. On Tuesday morning I got a call at work from the ENT Doc and the words he said will ring in my ears for a long time. He said Mrs. Nuffer Jerry has a mass growing in his throat that is coming off the lingual tonsils at the base of his tongue. These tonsils lie dormat and usually do not develop Jerry's have developed and are cutting off his air flow to his brain and lungs and heart. He will have to have an operation to remove the mass. And Mrs. Nuffer we cannot do this operation here, it is too risky and the hospitals around here are not set up for this type of operation. You see the neck area is a heavy bleed area and if there were a complication...well lets just say they cannot handle it here. I asked about Pensacola and no it could not be done there either. Our choice was UAB Birmingham or Emory in Atlanta Ga. The Doc preferred UAB. it was the best route to go.....and one more thing Mrs. Nuffer... jerry's lymph nodes are enlarged and irregular in shape and that leads us to believe it may be cancerous...so be prepared to stay there for afterwards for treatment if need be. I will call you back as soon as I get Jery an appt. with the specialist there. Ok...will talk to you soon. I just stood there looking at my phone...in disbelief....how could a boy so full of life be suddenly faced with a surgery so delicate and life threatning and so so far away in a place called Birmingham. I believe I was still standing in the same place still looking at my phone when the Doc's second call came in about 10 mins later. He told me that we were to go to Birmingham tomorrow for a 2:00 appointment with the Surgeon Specialist Dr. Charles Morgan. I managed to say ok and hung up. I called my DH Ed and gave him the sketchy info I had and then proceeded on how to tell Jerry later that day. We told him and he took it quite well. The next day we drove to UAB about 6 hrs away and had great talks there and back. Jerry asked alot of questions about death and dying and we talked alot about Heaven and our life there upon death. He has been such a brave soul about the whole matter. We saw Dr. Morgan and set up the surgery for Thursday. He explained all the pro's and con's to us. There was no choice of the mass remaining it had to come out. It would be sent off to the lab for a flash screen while in surgery and we would have some preliminary answer that day on cancer or not. We head back home to pack for either 4 days or 4 months...We get a plkace to stay at a reduced rate and go on the waiting list at Ronald McDonald house for sick kids. While waiting to get ready to leave on Wed. we get a call from our Ins who DECLINES our insurance coverage for the surgery....OMG don't they realize this is our son and he may die if this mass gets much bigger, he may die on the operating table with a bleed out if there is a complication he may die afterwards with a post-op bleed out...what is wrong with these people......They thought he could get the surgery here, they did not understand. Our surgeon was covered but NOT the hospital where he practices out of......OMG heart rate now over 200 bp and pilse off the charts stay calm Mom...Dad takes over.....it takes us 10 days of agony and worry to get the ins approved at UAB.....We go back and get Jerry to the assigned place at pre-op admissions. During this time as he is getting prepped and everything else the anesthesiaologist talks to Jerry and they become instant friends. This Doc fishes alot and comes to Destin for the big ones, he and Jerry talk fish shop and Jerry is much more relaxed now..he has a fish head on his side. As they are getting ready to wheel Jerry in he says to us....has anyone told you whay this mass had to come out asap...why no, not really except it may be cancerous...well he looks at Ed and I and says"it's because if Jerry was to get into an accident that required surgery and he was un-concious and when they would go to intubate him with the surgery breathing tube he would bleed out and die. At that very moment the world stopped spinning for this Mom and Dad. I heard no noises no machines no ones crying nothing...I looked at my Son and said Dear God, thank you for giving him back to us, thank you dear God that he now has a chance of a long life ahead of him. Thank you dear God. As soon as Jerry was wheeled in I let all of those 4 weeks out. This boy of our's who lives life on the edge...who hunts and fishes and four wheels and anything else he can find to do and in the most remote of places...this boy was being given another chance for life. In the days since the surgery and the recovery at home and all that went with it I find I have a different kind of boy coming into being a man now. He turned 17 in June, he is cancer free, there never was any as best as they can tell. He is much softer to me and his Dad he is much kinder to his friends he treads lightly. He told me about a week after his surgery in recovery mode how good he felt and how rested he was every morning. He told me of his desire to change things this his last year of school. He told me of his desire to go to college and from then on...This soft spoken boy to man he held me and gave me the most loving of hugs and told me how much he wants to live life and be a good man. Dear God...Thank you for giving me my Son back, thank you dear God for sparing him, for keeping him safe when he is so far off in the woods or on the range. Thank you dear God that you have a plan for his life, thank you for giving him to me for these precious and wonderful 17 years of life.