Mom's 2nd Bday

Came back from a good day after a short political campaign, felt a cold coming on and as soon as I got home I went straight to bed. At around eight p.m. there’s a phone call, it’s the hospital, they call my name because I usually take the calls but not tonight, I ask one of my aunts if they can please the the message this time, I can’t get out of bed, at this point my head is pounding, for a few months now there’s been this luggage bag by dinner table just taunting me, in it was a change of clothes for my mom should the eventual call come in, this was the call. There’s a certain fear that comes over me whenever I hear my name spoken in a loud tone in Spanish, it reminds me of the time my grandma passed away and I was woken to “DANIEL!” in a fearful tone, it was that same tone. I mustered energy enough to walk out to the kitchen, my aunts were in disbelief and I was almost disoriented with the cold that had not been there earlier in the day was hitting me with full force. They have a match; they said we have to leave right now as soon as possible. So, for the third time I grabbed that luggage bag from the floor, twice before in about as many years we’d received that call and by the time we reached the hospital twice before the surgeon’s said, it’s a no go, we’d been warned that this could happen, that it could happen more than once, that the surgeon had to physically see the liver and if the doctor said it wasn’t a match even after all of the preceding procedures, they couldn’t risk it. We headed towards Beverly Hills for a third time in three years and even stopped by my old job, I saw my former co-workers busying away, thought about having hung out with a professor friend earlier in the day, what type of medicine to purchase on our way back, anything to take my mind out of my present situation. We were given a tower and room number, the person on the phone apparently gave quick instructions and as is procedure I’m sure, we were quickly whisked into elevators upon arrival to Cedar Sinai’s pre-operation surgical building, when we got to her room there was a person cleaning it, we said we were given that room and she said that there must be a mistake because she was just now in the process of cleaning it but would check to see what the mix up was and where we should head to, she came back and said my goodness you’re right, please come in, you must have JUST received the order to come in because as of a few minutes ago this room was vacant but it does show you there so please allow me to quickly finish cleaning and you’ll be ready. Within a few minutes the first surgeon arrived she was still in her exercise clothing, she was in the gym when she got the call, she took quick observational notes, touched her liver area said that the rest of the team was on its way but they’d be heading straight to the operating room that she was the only doctor she’d see and said, “I’m leaving now to inform the other doctors, if you don’t see me it’s because it’s a ‘go ahead’ and I’ll be prepping for your surgery but if you see me it’s because I’m going to tell you that we won’t go through with it. It was around ten and still no word, we thought that the doctor would come in any moment and apologize and probably still make it back to the gym. I asked the nurse and she said she’d check for us, she came back into the room and nonchalantly said,” they’re getting ready, you WILL be going into surgery that’s why the doctor’s not back, she’s prepping as well.” We were totally caught off guard and trying to figure how to go about whatever was coming next, it’s the day the doctors tell you will come but you’ve stopped believing and then it comes out of nowhere. I asked where we could wait for her and they said we could go home because it was going to be at the very least a twelve hour procedure but that they’d call us every hour on the hour for an update. I told my tia’s they could head home, that I’d stay with her till they rolled her into the operating room. Just before midnight she went into the operating room, I was a nervous wreck but my good friend Will Flo came to scoop me up, we ended up at the now defunct Lucy’s on Hoover and Washington it was almost two in the morning, I forgot I was sick, Will Flo reassured me that everything would be cool and to stay strong, I thanked him and he dropped me off. Sure enough every hour on the hour for twelve hours I received a phone call letting me know everything was going well and at last a little past noon on February 17th 2017 I received the final call saying that the surgery was a success they gave me a room number. Before all of this mom’s and I made a pact, she said don’t tell anyone about my condition, bless their hearts but they’ll bring me down and unknowingly send me to grave while I’m still kicking and fighting. I agreed with no problem, in the first post operation meeting with her liver transplant team the psychologist told me that if I was going to be her care giver for the year in recovery that was coming it was unhealthy to keep that to myself, she said at the very least choose a small hand full of people you trust to talk to about the things I’d been and would be going through because it’s not easy. A few of you knew, most of you didn’t, I’m only sharing this to a certain degree against my mom’s wishes because it’s exactly one year ago that my mother was granted a second chance at life and in case you were wondering, she’s celebrating her first new birthday running around the city being more active than she’s ever been, in great spirits, the only person that never lost faith.