You guys are somenawseome

Big thank you to everyone who said a Hail Mary, or a novena, or even gave Jesus a brief wave this week. Ditto if you raised a glass of a substance known to impair judgment and said "here's to that guy with the big scary medical problem who is the dad of that girl in the computer whose blog I read sometimes."

Here is the news:

As of yesterday (my yesterday, which was Tuesday) my dad was running a fever and things looked un-good. His blood work looked a little bit funny and there was at least one surgeon running around in the hall with a two handled saw, ready to cut my dad's leg off. But then the doctors decided to do a leukemia scan (my dad agreed to this but told them he did not wish to know the results) and wait for the cultures to come back on the infection to decide anything.

Then it was Wednesday morning. My dad's fever went away and he felt better. The doctor's did not yet have lab results of any variety, but they decided that since dad was so hot to get out of the hospital, he could go home with a pic line and do six weeks of IV antibiotics from home (yes, you can do this if you are a veteran of medical everything). This plan was all chosen and the forms were signed.

I, in a very stupid but also very peaceful and zen moment, put my cell phone in my bag and went to the gym and did not look at it for 6 hours. Why I felt like I could do this is one of the great mysteries of my personality.

While I was tearing my hands up rock climbing, my actual real live dad called to tell me that he had reached a decision, based on his talks with his doctors, to just have the knee replacement surgery all over again - in like two days. So it went from "go home and juice up on anti-biotics" to "let's just get the offending parts out of your body right now" in the space of a few hours.

Now, since I did not get to the phone until right about now, which is to say after midnight, I don't know what to make of this.

Interpretation One: Dad's cultures came back from the lab and the stuff in his fake knee is so offensive that his doctors said "either lose the leg or lose the offensive fake knee parts" and that they said this based on the assumption that my dad does not currently have leukemia, ie, the leukemia lab work is not back yet.

Interpretation Two: Dad's cultures came back from the lab and the stuff in his fake knee is so offensive that his doctors said "either lose the leg or lose the offensive fake knee parts" and they said this based on decent looking leukemia scan results - ie, they felt like there a point to trying to save my dad's leg because so far it looks like he is not dying.

Interpretation Three: Is there a possible interpretation where the leukemia scan came back looking bad and the doctors decided to go forward with a messy and painful knee replacement surgery? I mean, what kind of treatment plan is it to give a guy who has less than two months left to live a new knee? What medical person would go forward with a major surgery intended to improve quality of life - for a guy who was known to be circling the drain?

Am I reaching here?

Whatever. I am going to bed.

But before I do, let me just say again that you, internet people, are some kind of awesome. Really. I ran my usual caper: giving God a sarcastic bag of nothing - but you all prayed and had cocktails for my dad and the news, though not a sun-drenched meadow of frolicking puppies, does not suck that much.

Right?

Right.

I love you.

Goodnight.