Subtitle

A CONFLUENCE OF DAYS, WEEKS AND YEARS

by Jonathan Vold

Monday, March 14

Journal, Middle Of March, 1990

you shall above all things be glad and young
       — e. e. cummings

March 2:  Josh up from Champaign for eye exam. Says vision is jumpy. I suggest he get glasses that jump in reverse.  Considering his earlier concern about dehydration, I write this symptom off as psychosomatic. The doctor, as if to concur, rates his vision as 20-20.

March 14:  Josh is back up. Says he has had a CAT-scan in the morning after more symptoms of double vision, and has come to Chicago at the urging of the doctors in Champaign. He looks very glary-eyed. We bring him to the hospital at 9:00 pm. After about an hour in the emergency room —relatively un-tense! —we meet Dr. Raj, who suggests (strongly) that Josh be checked in that evening. He is left there in the emergency room, and we all go home. (“We” being Mom, Parul, Josh’s friends John Valusas, Dave ____ and Keith ____, and me, with a visit from Pastor Gimmi; Don is home with Annie).

March 15:  Josh has an MRI exam in the morning, and Dr. Raj proceeds in the evening with a neural operation, placing a permanent shunt from Josh’s brain to his abdominal area. He has one fourth of his head shaved and he has holes in his head and in his abdomen. The operation is done in an hour and a quarter, and Josh wakes up in intensive care with an IV in his arm —standard fare for brain surgery; this one went very smoothly. I am at work during the operation, but I somehow manage to get in to see him at 10:30 pm —only three hours afterwards. Josh is awake, watching a basketball game.

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