Since

To my son Tommy,

It is almost getting comical, because if I don't laugh about it I will just cry. Pulled up to your grandparent's house yesterday, and as we are parking I hear an ambulance sirening its way down Marriottsville Rd. As it comes into view, I can see it slowing. Horrible as it may be, I sat there saying, "Please go to the house next door, please go to the house next door, please..." No such luck. Seems your great grandpa was having trouble with his catheter and couldn't pee. One thing I have learned recently is how having to go can affect a persons mental state. Yeah, I thought they were pulling my leg too when they told me that, but I have seen it first hand now.

I guess I am a little of a "glass half empty" type because the issue was fixed relatively quickly at the hospital and your Great Grandpa Leo was back that night. I should celebrate the wins, and not lament the challenges. And that was a small victory but a victory none the less.

Your Nana Jeanne on the other hand is like the other shoe waiting to drop. She has the needle biopsy coming for the lumps in her breast plus she is patiently waiting for a polyp in her inner plumbing (I believe because of the diverticulitis but I may be confused about that) to send her to the hospital. Oy. Your mom did her cimzia shot today because her innards were acting up too. Plus your mom is currently diligently working on ten thousand school papers that she had to put off because of running around for others. And your Pop-pop has an operation coming soon for his a-fib, which is also on our minds and hearts. That is just the important stuff on top of Grandpa Leo and Grandma Roro.

Other things like house thermostats failing, chores piling up, adjusting to new norms, scheduling logistics, and a small recent crime wave in the neighborhood which has had the police chopper and cars making the rounds almost daily, aka all the more mundane challenges of just living busy life pale in comparison.

Yet despite my natural pessimistic outlook, if I stop and take a deep breath, I can see it. I can see all this love being offered to me, to your grandpa, to your mom, to your grandma, to you, to the whole crew. It comes in the most simplest forms; a co-worker coming to help get the thermostat straight; a hug from a sister in law; a bamboo plant from a long lost bud; a friend suggesting a song that just might make it a little more joyful as we try to get through; a cousin sitting with your Grandmom Roro; an entire school praying for our family; an aunt and uncle helping transport to and from for lab work; an understanding boss who has allowed me to be flexible with work not because he is my uncle but because he cares; your mom's teacher being understanding about due dates and sympathetic to her family obligations during this difficult time; an offer from a brother in law for anything that needs to be done that you can tell by the look in his eye is sincere and solid and not just words; a gentle shoulder; a kind word; countless prayers offered; an ear to bend; a moment to share; a well timed smile; a generous laugh; and seeing my five year old son on bended knee at church praying hard. These examples come from far and near, in person, by phone, by letter, by social media, from friends and family, close and distant, and are so plentiful that I could never recount each and every. These examples are exactly what you need to realize everything is worth it and you just have to keep carrying on.

As your Great Grandpa Leo was always quick to say, "The world just keeps spinning, I just try to hold on" which includes my implied ending of "even if I am holding on by a blade of grass to keep me from hurtling off this rock into the great abyss of space." To all those who have shared those moments, shared their hearts, thank you. Thank you for being our blade of grass to keep us grounded and going.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Too Busy

To my son Tommy,

I get it. People get busy. Voting is a hassle. But when you are older, and you think life is too hectic to bother, remember everything going on in our lives this week, and think of this picture and the fact your old man spared twenty precious minutes to vote early.

Sincerely with love from your dad,

Leo

Talking In Tongues

To my son Tommy,

One of the funnier things that happened yesterday, and yes even in the direst of times the Downey genetic code seems to seek humor, was your Grandpa Leo speaking. He was all loopie from anesthesia. He was answering a doctor's questions, the exact same dozen questions that they keep asking every five minutes or so. What's your name? When were you born? Do you know where you are? etc. Then the commands. Smile real big. Push up here. Shrug big. Look left. Look right. etc.

Except for the droop in the left side of his face, he was doing alright. He was mumbling a bit but all things considered. The doctor or nurse or whichever health care professional would usually finish with some encouraging statement like "You look to be doing alright," to which your Grandpa would respond "You should see it from this side."

Well on the third or fourth set of questions, he started mumbling something that seemed incoherent. Oh no, here we go. The doctor and nurse were looking around the room at your mom and me, hoping for some recognition. I couldn't understand the mumbling at first. Then I caught the last word, "feo". Did he just call me, or someone else, ugly in Spanish? Worth a try. I answered him in Spanish and told him to speak English. Your Grandpa Leo retorted, "Besame el culo." Oh good. That is Spanish. At least if they crossed some wires in there, they just switched the language circuit rather than scrambling the language circuit. I won't repeat the couple other things he said in Spanish, because decorum prohibits it, but at least one of us in the recovery room understood him. That made the doc and nurse feel better. Not sure they would have been as happy if I translated directly.

Consequently, he asked every new health care professional their nationality. Evidently he wanted to either have a conversation in Spanish or make sure he could cuss them out and complain in a language they didn't understand. That probably offended a couple of them, because an old white guy was asking them where they are from so he seemed to be prejudging, and they would judge right back assuming he wanted to deal with some white guy like him. That was far from the truth. When the one doctor said she was Hebrew, your grandfather started talking Russian. Don't know how that erroneous brain connection was made, but it made me laugh. Oh well, your mom warned everyone about his odd sense of humor. I thought the best was when a doctor came in and dad asked where he was from. "New York City," replied the doctor before adding, "but my family is from India." The doctor took the question in stride, even though you could tell he had been asked something like this many times before in life and was just about tired of it. Later I explained to him the Spanish connection and the doctor seemed pleasantly surprised by your granddad's motivation for asking the question, and then preceded to talk some Spanish to him. It made your granddad smile. And anything that made him smile at that point made me smile!

Sinceramente , con el amor de su papá,
Leo

Interconnected

To my son Tommy,

As I sit here in the NCCU waiting room of Johns Hopkins, anxiously waiting to be let back to see your Grandpa Leo, I am trying to digest everything that has happened in the past couple hours, days, weeks, etc. First, an update. Your grandpa is out of surgery but not quite out of the woods yet. We will see if he lost any motor function with the brain surgery and it looks like radiation might be in our future. But they got most of the tumor and your Grandpa Leo is alive, so all things considered, I suppose this is a success. 

Your Grandma Roro is being kept another night at GBMC and she is upset and blames me for that. I hope they can figure out why she is going through these delirium episodes but she is now a less than cooperative patient. I will see her later tonight and take my punishment in place of my father.

It occurs to me how amazingly interconnected life is. Had we not convinced dad to get that CT scan last Saturday? I spent years tending bar practicing getting the occasional belligerent drunks to behave and do my bidding. I had to use very similar tactics to get my dad to agree to the scans. Had I not met and married my wonderful wife? She just happened to start studying nursing which gave us a better understanding of everything going on. What would have happened if she was not there to help? Had dad not had the right doctors at the right time with the proper sense of urgency? Little miracles all.

Yet, it is still a sobering thought on how far beyond control life really is. As much as the little miracles of life entwine and help at the right moment, I am reminded that I have to trust in God. Even in those moments that defy all explanation, those moments where everything happens at once, like when you are in the ER for your mom and you get the call to get your dad to the hospital now, and everything that can go wrong seems to be doing so, faith may be the only thing to pull us through. Alright, I am starting to ramble...they better get your mom and me back to see your grandpa soon.

Sincerely with love from your dad,

Leo

When It Rains, It Pours

To my son Tommy,

"Alright son, if you could break away from work, I need to take your mom to the hospital," said your Grandpa Leo over the phone.

"Be right there," I replied. I could hear my inner voice saying, "You can do this. Your dad's neurosurgeon appointment isn't till Thursday," as I picked up my keys and headed out the door from work. I even thought to myself that it is important to take each issue at hand, one thing at a time. Work is busy and important but this is much more important.

Your Grandma Roro was out of it when I picked them up. Confused, delirious, but at least she was compliant. In fact that is a big sign of her having a problem... she doesn't fight going to the ER. We had been in the ER room for less than two hours when the call from your grandad's doctor came in.

Your grandpa's doctor said, with the recurrent facial ticks, that there is no reason to wait to act on his brain tumor. She had reviewed the MRI and read the reports. She said to go down to Johns Hopkins ER now and get admitted. They would get ready to take this tumor out because, benign or malignant, it was pressing on something. His doctor made some more calls and called back and said rather than sitting in ER she will have the admitting orders ready for him at Johns Hopkins and get down there as soon as he can.

This is one of those rare moments that I needed to clone myself. How in the world am I going to pull this off? I called your mom and she left her nursing school class to come immediately. But my heart and mind are split in about twenty different directions.

I am physically with your Grandma Roro who now is being admitted to GBMC and just got room 3428. Part of my heart and mind is with Grandpa Leo, who was brought down to Johns Hopkins by your mom and finally got the paperwork and room 68 on the 12th floor of Zayed tower. I am also worried about your mom and having to miss some class time plus she was having some sinus infection issues and is due her Cimzia shot. Another part of me is with your Great Grandpa Leo and Nana Jeanne hoping they can manage at the house for right now without anyone. And then I am worried about you and how we are throwing a wrench or your day to day schedule. Did I cover everything going on? I didn't mention work, which is always present and always busy and as soon as run out, comes up with new problems immediately. But that is the least of my worries.

They say God doesn't give you more than you can handle. Evidently he thinks our family is filled with some serious tough as nail badasses that can handle everything at once. Oh well, I guess Noah would have been able to handle that flood easily if it came as a sprinkle over a years worth of time. We will just keep doing whatever it is we have to and I apologize now for any missed Daddy-Tommy time or any of the mistakes I am probably bound to make in the next couple days of being spread thin.

Sincerely with love from your dad,

Leo

No Bucket List

To my son Tommy,

This is your Grandpa Leo's brain. With this picture, there is bad news and good news. The bad news of course is that little white circle on the left of the picture, which actually represents the right side of the brain because it is a mirror image. The good news is your grandfather can finally prove to Grandma Roro that he has a brain. Sorry, maybe that is in poor taste but if your Grandpa Leo can make jokes and laugh about it, I will follow his lead.

After this MRI, we know nothing more than we did yesterday. The docs have to get together and look and read and guess. Then they will tell us the plan. We will talk about time and options and risks and who knows, they might get in there and take it out and put this whole thing off for another twenty years or so.

Your Grandpa Leo is taking things in stride, making uncomfortable jokes, and still pissing off your Grandma Roro. In other words nothing much has changed, except he isn't driving and occasionally has a facial tick. Oh and he wants to find a local bar serving gluten free Redbridge beer and order two more (aka tumor) beers. I told you the jokes were in poor taste.

The other day, as I was driving your grandfather back from a doctor appointment, he says to me, "You know, I was trying to think if I had a bucket list. I don't. There is nothing I desperately want or need to do."

I suggested that he create a bucket list anyhow but keep it simple. For example his bucket list should be "I want to eat Bertha's mussels." which of course he retorted that he has done that plenty of time. My reply, "Yeah, but have you done it this week?"

Our conversations during drives to and from doctors' offices have run the gambit. We talk about you, and mommy, and Roro, and your great grandparents. We talk about life and death and God. We talk about important philosophical principals and we talk about mundane things like cable internet speed and our online game. We laugh and joke probably a little bit more than we should.

But over the past two days, I keep coming back in my mind to that "No bucket list". Somehow, this great man sitting in the passenger seat next to me, facing a little white blob on a MRI that would completely destroy some people, has done it all, or at least done enough. Oh to live life, that faced with a potential end, you have no bucket list, nothing left unsaid or undone, and you willingly accept your turn to be the instrument in which those around you can receive the grace of God by taking care of you and those around you, even if it means facing suffering. Your grandfather is still teaching his son. The extremes this man goes to to drive home a lesson. Jeesh.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Subtle Hyperdensity

To my son Tommy,

Your grandfather went to the ER today because he thought he might be having a stroke. He was working in the yard and left side of his face started twitching. He is ultra aware of the signs of stroke, so he hurried in and told Uncle Kevin to take him to the ER. On the way, Grandpa Leo was pushing on his face and the twitching stopped. By the time I got to the ER, roughly ten minutes after your Grandma Roro called to alert us, Grandpa Leo was convinced there was nothing wrong and that he was wasting everyone's time and the hospital was out to financial optimize his visit.

After convincing my stubborn father that a couple quick scans might help us all sleep better tonight, he finally agreed to stay for a bit. Those scans, specifically the CT scan, aren't going to help us sleep better tonight. "Subtle hyperdensity in the deep/subcortical white matter of the right frontoparietal region." is a fun way of saying brain tumor. Later on in the diagnosis it says one of the possibilities is "metastatic disease" which is a fun way of saying it might be cancer. They wanted to admit your grandad and get started right away. But your grandpa decided to head home anyway and will deal with it through his doctors come Monday. In his mind, it is the weekend and he knows how hospitals work (or actually don't work) on the weekends and getting some fancy hi def pictures (aka MRI) right away isn't going to help his cause. I don't know if he made the right decision or not, but I do know you come from a long line of stubborn Irishmen, especially when it comes to our health. On the way home, Grandpa Leo expressed anger, not at possibility of having brain cancer, but rather that it is coming at such an inopportune time while he taking care of his wife, and his mom, and his dad. That's your grandpa for ya. It is that attitude of his that somehow has me not sleeping while I am here at my house rather than not sleeping while I am staying over at his house in case he has a seizure or something. Prayers my son, we need prayers, perhaps to God for his intercession using the ArchAngel Raphael who is the "medicine of God" and we include just about everyone in our family now.

Sincerely with love from your dad,

Leo

P.s. The pic was on my iPad because I was going through my wedding pics on my anniversary and that was one of the only ones with just me and dad.