My Husband Needed Emergency Surgery, Yet He Was Thinking About Our Son With a Disability

I meant to publish this post last week, on Father’s Day. Didn’t get around to it, though. Mostly because I didn’t want to let sad thoughts permeate a day of celebration.

Over the past year our family has faced many challenges. My husband, Nilo, was diagnosed with #livercancer back in June 2019 and due to complications from an emergency surgery, he lives with an ileostomy and parenteral/intravenous nutrition. All this while undergoing oncological treatment.

We do our best to navigate these challenges and enjoy the good days. Mostly, we try to keep a positive atmosphere at home since our 34-year-old son, Alberto, with #intellectualdisability, “feeds” on our state of mind.

But this post has to do with an anecdote from that long hospitalization.

After that major surgery in which the cancer was discovered, my husband had an episode of peritonitis, requiring a second emergency surgery. He was in a lot of pain when he was being rushed away to the operating room and yet he managed to say one phrase to the surgeon,“Please, do your best. I just need a couple of years…”

I suspect that neither the surgeon nor the nurses understood what he meant. They were fighting for his survival that day. Two years down the line seemed a long way off.

I knew exactly what he meant, though. He was asking for two years to help Alberto stand on his own. His medical emergency escalated during a family celebration in the States. Up to that point we had been living in Venezuela and in order to deal with his intense medical needs, we decided to move back home.

Nilo’s concern has always been to help Alberto stand on his own, with a certain degree of financial stability and a support network. We would speak of “when we are gone” as a something much further along, but his life-threatening illness had given that phrase a sense of urgency.

Well, that “couple of years” is running, thanks in great part to the excellent medical care he received and the support we have enjoyed from our immediate family.

So, this is a post to celebrate my husband for being an exemplary dad…for thinking of Alberto on the way to the operating room while in excruciating pain. For facing his diagnosis and treatment head-on and fighting the good fight.

And here is wishing that he makes it to the two-year mark and beyond.

#intellectualdisability #livercancer #parenting