The Longest Day

On Friday, this beautiful snow started in the early afternoon while my brother was having brain surgery.

My sister kept calling or texting every 2 hours with updates.

The snow kept falling, and the texts kept coming.  The ENT's have just finished opening the skull and exposing the tumor.

They've started to remove the tumor. 

It's going well.

There were a lot of those "It's going well; he's doing fine."  reports.

But they kept coming.  

The snow kept falling and I wanted to enjoy it, but my heart was in Virginia with my brother and sister.

I baked cinnamon rolls all afternoon while the children played in the winter wonderland.

Every time I got a text, I said another prayer.

Finally, a message that they expected to be finished in the wee small hours of the morning.  Did I want to be updated during the night or get my sleep?

Update me, please.  

And so she did.  Every couple of hours my phone buzzed on my nightstand.  

He's doing well.  Might be finished between 7 and 8 a.m.

Late morning.

Around 7:30 a.m. I heard that they expected another 5-6 hours.  

Those prayers after texts were becoming more insistent!  Begging.  For the surgeons to be able to continue.  For my brother to remain stable.  

I broke down and cried after the report that it could last even longer.  It had been nearly 24 hours, not the 12-18 that we thought was the worst-case scenario.

It seemed like it would never end---this dangerous operation near the brain stem using microscopes.  I was dreading every text message, afraid that the news would finally be bad.  But, mercifully, it never was.  And the end, which we thought would never come, came.  The saint of a surgeon finally came out after 29 agonizing hours to say they were closing up and it was a success as far as he could tell.

They're keeping my brother sedated for at least a full day, which is good because his wife, son, and sister desperately needed to sleep, too.

So it has been very quiet since the last text with the doctor's report.  There has been an easing of tensions here.  I'm breathing deeply and sighing a lot to let the stress out.

God is so good to have gotten us this far.  Now we just need to continue to hold His hand on the road to Recovery.

Thanks for all your prayers!