Through It All

The next morning when we got to the hospital, Vince had to have yet another X-ray of his chest. They told him he was going to have to have his lung tapped and the details of the procedure. Dick went to the cafeteria while I was sitting with Vince in X-ray. He got scared and said he was going to find his Dad. They never came back, so I went looking for them. I told Dick that Vince was not going to co-operate again. I went back to radiology thinking the two of them would be there in a couple of minutes. They didn’t show, so I went back outside. Vince had put his arms around a pole outside the Emergency Room and was holding a protest. He was not going back in the hospital for the procedure.

Finally, Dr. Sutterlin came out to talk to him. He explained that he could not risk doing the surgery without knowledge of what the spot was on Vince’s lung, and without the surgery, Vince’s spine would collapse and he could become paralyzed or die. He gave Vince five minutes to make up his mind to come back in the hospital or go home. Help! My patience was getting very thin! I seriously doubted if any other patient caused a surgeon this much trouble. I was surprised Dr. Sutterlin took the time to deal with this uncooperative teenage boy. I came up with every threat possible, “you will never see another friend the rest of your life, you will never have another phone call, you will never play Sega again, you will never call Vinny again, and I will go home and leave you standing right here all by yourself!”

My threats worked. Vince finally gave in. They cut a large hole in the body cast and took out four tubes of pink foamy fluid. Dr. Sutterlin asked Vince if he recently had had a strawberry milkshake, which he did have the previous day. I asked, “How did the milkshake get in his lungs?" It was explained that the fluid was not in his lungs, but on the outside of the lungs in Vince’s chest cavity. He had a leak in his thoracic duct. This is a tube like vessel, which runs through the chest (thoracic area.) This duct is part of your intestinal wall, and carries bile and intestinal fluid, and the liquefied fat from your diet. The strawberry milkshake had a lot of fat in it. The thoracic fluid also has a large amount of white blood cells, which is why there was no infection present. The leak was being absorbed by his lung which was very close to all the activity going on in the area around where Vince’s spine had disintegrated. This was a relief for me because I feared Vince’s lung was full of blood from the disease eating away at it. Dr. Sutterlin would have another doctor attempt to fix this thoracic duct leak during the spine surgery.