No More Bullies (3 page)

“Sit where? What are you talking about? Gene!”

“Right over here.” Gene pointed to the road sign as he helped Joyce through the snow. “Careful now. All you have to do is sit on the sign and try to put as much weight on it as you can. We don't have a jack, but if you can bounce on the sign a bit, I think the car will come off the ground enough that I can get the spare tire on.”

Joyce recognized her husband's incredible presence of mind and ingenuity in rigging the lever and fulcrum from the post and toolbox in the freezing cold. She didn't even bother to question whether it was dangerous for her or the baby to be bouncing on a road sign. She carefully stepped up to the sign, turned, and planted herself on it. Then, by pushing against the ground with her feet, she raised her end of the signpost for the first bounce. She relaxed her legs and let the sign sink beneath her.

“Don't bounce too hard!” Gene called, kneeling in the snow next to the wheel well, waiting for the precise moment when the car raised enough to slide the tire on. “I don't want the post to snap.” With a grunt, he shoved the tire closer.

The Ford inched off the ground, slightly at first, as the post caved in the top of the toolbox with a crunch.Another bounce, and the Ford creaked upward six more inches. They needed two more, if the lever could just hold long enough!

Gene worked feverishly, shoving the tire into the wheel well. “Keep going! Sit as close to the end as you dare!” He put his shoulder under the wheel well, ready to push up with the next bounce. “One more bounce!” The signpost was bowing on the ends. It wouldn't last much longer. “Once more, now! Bounce on it,
now!”

As Joyce bounced on the edge of the sign, the car eased upward just far enough. Gene slammed the wheel onto the lugs and held it while the car came back down on the tire.

“Hallelujah!” he shouted, scrambling quickly to retrieve the lug nuts with his bare fingers. The cold bit into his skin, but he couldn't care less. He had to get that tire secure. He twirled on one lug nut, then another, then another. His fingers felt like tree trunks as he reached for the tire iron to cinch down the nuts. The cold iron stuck to his hands but he kept working until—

“Okay!” The tire was on, fit and snug.

Joyce was still sitting on the road sign like a child on the low end of a teetertotter. Gene bounded through the snow to help her off the sign before she slipped into the snow.

“We did it!” he cried as he wrapped his arms around her and helped her to her feet. “Are you all right?”

“I'm okay. Just freezing!”

He got her back in the car, closed her in against the cold, then he returned to that blessed, hardworking, God-sent road sign. Exhausted and nearly frozen, he mustered his strength, picked up the post, and lugged it back to where he'd found it, dropping it back in the hole. It was tilting a bit, but it was back on the job—not that many travelers might be along to see it anytime soon.

Gene hurried to the car and jumped in behind the steering wheel. He tried to squeeze his fingers around the wheel, but it took several minutes before the feeling returned to his fingers enough for him to drive. “Thank You, Lord,” he said.

“Yes, indeed. Thank You, sweet Jesus,” Joyce echoed. “And now, please help us get to the hospital.”

Gene revved the engine that had continued running through the entire ordeal, and they were off again, Joyce's contractions growing more frequent and more intense with each mile. When they finally arrived at the hospital, it was approaching 3:00 A.M. on Saturday morning. Gene left the car in front of the emergency entrance and ran in to find a doctor, a nurse, anyone who could help him get Joyce into the delivery room. At that hour there was no doctor, but he found a few orderlies.

“Let's just get her inside to a delivery room,” said one, “and then we'll proceed from there!”

“Here—please call our doctor.” Gene handed a piece of paper with the doctor's name and phone number on it to one of the orderlies as a woman in a blue uniform whisked Joyce down the hall on a gurney. In those days, fathers were not permitted in the birthing room, so Gene was directed to a room where he was instructed to wait.

Meanwhile, the intern took Joyce to an empty delivery room and helped her get situated. A nurse came in and told her, “We haven't been able to reach your doctor by phone, but we'll keep trying. Just try to relax, and don't worry. We'll be right down the hall in the nursery. Ring this buzzer if you need anything.”

“But I'm—”

“The important thing is that we don't want the baby to come too soon. Don't force anything. Give yourself time. That way when the doctor gets here, you'll be ready.”

“I don't think it's going to be that long.”

The nurse scowled. “Try to wait until the doctor gets here,” she said curtly. Then she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Joyce lay flat on the gurney for what seemed like hours, enduring the contractions, counting the minutes between them. The contractions were coming very quickly now, and they were much stronger. The baby would be born soon. She reached for the buzzer and pressed the button. She waited, trying to relax, gathering her strength for the impending delivery.

No nurse. She waited. And waited. She pressed the buzzer again. Still no nurse came through the door. The door was closed, and Joyce didn't dare try to get off the gurney to call for help. She squeezed the buzzer again— harder, holding it there.
Where are they?
She could feel the baby pressing against her. “Help!” she called out. “Somebody, please! Help me! The baby's coming!”

Joyce squeezed the buzzer again, alternately pressing and releasing it, pressing and releasing. Wherever the buzzer was ringing—if it was ringing—somebody was bound to notice. Finally, a nurse she'd never seen before— she turned out to be the head nurse from the floor
below
— came running into her room, took one look at her, and slapped an ether mask over Joyce's face. That was the last thing Joyce recalled. She still had not seen a doctor. She'd hardly even seen a nurse.

Sometime later—how much later, no one knows—the doctor finally arrived from his amblings somewhere out in the cosmos and got involved with the birth of the child. Because of the forced delay in delivery, the baby had shifted around to a near breech position.

“Forceps!” he called to the nurse. She slapped them into his hand, and he managed to clamp them around the baby's head. They had to reposition the baby to be born naturally. There was no time for a Cesarean section at this point. The baby needed to be born now . . . or never. They worked feverishly, pressing on the mother's abdomen, pulling on the forceps, repositioning, pressing, pulling. Finally, with one last yank, the baby was born.

But not without injury. At some point the forceps had slipped off the head and traumatized the right side of the neck just under the jaw. No matter. The little boy was badly bruised, but he was breathing and very much alive!

A short while later, the doctor stepped into the waiting room where Gene was pacing anxiously. “Congratulations, Mr. Peretti. It's a boy.”

Gene made it to the recovery room only moments after Joyce woke up. In her arms lay a baby boy, his eyes closed, his tiny body bundled in blankets. “Oh, Joyce!” Gene gushed through tears of joy. “Thank You, God! Thank You for this new life.” He kissed Joyce lightly on the forehead and gazed lovingly at their child. “So, I guess we're naming him Frank Edward.”

Joyce smiled. “Mm-hm.” They'd already discussed what they would name the child once they knew its gender. They would name a boy after Joyce's brother Franklin and give him Gene's middle name. “Frank Edward.”

“Hello, Frank! Nice to have you with us.” Curiosity, and then concern, quelled his smile. He fingered the blanket away from the baby's neck. “What's this?”

“The doctor said it was nothing to worry about,” Joyce replied, but her voice was troubled, unbelieving. She lifted the child and turned him gently. The baby's head just wouldn't lie naturally. The neck seemed strangely crooked. “Do you think something's wrong?”

Gene stroked the tiny head and said nothing.

“Gene?”

Their eyes met, and neither could hide what each was sure of.

Something was wrong with their child.

COMPLICATIONS

Chapter Three

I
t's called
cystic hygroma
, defined by the medical dictionary as “a lesion caused by a mass of dilated lymphatics, due to the failure of the embryonic lymphatics to connect with the venous system.” It's a birth defect that usually develops on the side of the neck, so I suppose the role of the doctor's forceps in delivering me is debatable. Whatever the case, the folks at the hospital never got a clue—or never wanted one.

As was customary in 1951, Mom's doctor insisted that she stay in the hospital for several days before he would discharge her, and those days became a disconcerting la-la land of denial on the part of the medical staff. My head still rested awkwardly, I wasn't eating much, and what little nourishment I could handle didn't stay with me long. Whenever Mom expressed her concerns to the doctor and nurses, they all pooh-poohed the problem. “Don't you worry, Mrs. Peretti. You're gonna have a big, strong boy there. Just like his dad.”

Mom also asked about the small lump on the side of my neck.

“Oh, it's nothing,” Mom's nurse assured her. “The doctor used forceps to help draw the baby out during birth, so it's probably just a little bruise. It will clear up in a matter of days, and your baby will be fine.”

Well, they
were
the medical experts, weren't they? Mom and Dad accepted the assessment and took me home, fully expecting the lump to dissolve within a few days.

It didn't.

Instead, it grew larger . . . and larger. Within a month, the lump on my neck had swollen to the size of a baseball. I could barely swallow.

As God's providence—oh, so mysterious and so painful at the time—would have it, Dad's ministry at the little church came to an end, and it was time to move on. Dad's folks, my grandparents, lived in Seattle, so we traveled there to live with them while Mom and Dad figured out the next direction for their life and family. Concerned that the lump on my throat was expanding, Mom took me to another doctor, to get a second opinion. This physician took one look at my neck and declared emphatically, “We need to get him to the hospital right away!”

My parents took me to Children's Orthopedic Hospital in Seattle, where the doctors quickly diagnosed my condition— and none too soon. Cystic hygroma can lead to obstruction of a person's breathing; it can cause nervous palsies, possible hemorrhaging, and infection, and I was showing signs of developing everything on the list. It was time to operate.

I was barely two months old when the doctors cut my neck open, trying to clean out a swollen mass that threatened to kill me!

They succeeded—mostly—and then kept me in the hospital for ten days to watch for possible complications. It must have been a long haul for a newborn. Mom recalls that when they finally placed me back in her arms to go home, I was a tiny “bag of bones,” with a long scar and black sutures that made it appear as if my head had been nearly severed and then sewn back on.

“We've done all that we can,” the doctors told my parents. “Just take him home and love him, and that will be the best medicine for him.” Although the doctors informed Mom and Dad that a recurrence was possible and that cystic growth into surrounding tissues was unpredictable, they didn't expect any complications.

Mom and Dad got back to building their life. Dad went back to working at the luggage factory where he'd worked while attending Bible college, and we did all right. Thanks to the love of my folks and my older brother, Terry, I fattened up again just fine.

But then came complications the doctors didn't expect. As they'd said, cystic growth can be unpredictable, and the unpredictable happened. My tongue began to swell, and before long, it was hanging out of my mouth, oozing a fluid that turned to black scab when it contacted the air. I drooled constantly, leaving bloody, blackish residue around my mouth and chin, down the front of my clothes, and on my pillow. I was having trouble eating—imagine trying to swallow, even chew, without the help of your tongue!

I became a frequent and familiar patient at Children's Orthopedic Hospital. The doctors feared cancer, but one elderly surgeon had seen my symptoms previously in another patient, a little girl, whose precious face had been hideously distorted due to her condition. The doctor guessed that the swelling in my tongue was the result of my earlier operation, during which the tumor had been removed. Some lymph glands had also been removed, so now my lymphatic system was secreting infection into my tongue.

It was going to be a tough problem to fix. With the tongue so enlarged, there was no way to shrink it down again except to
carve
it down. In the first of many operations on my tongue and mouth, the doctors literally cut a wedge of flesh from my tongue in an effort to keep it in my mouth.

Next problem: With my tongue carved down to a stump, it couldn't do the usual tasks a tongue is supposed to do. I could barely move it. Eating was difficult, speaking even more so. The surgeons operated again . . . and again, removing flesh below my tongue to free it up, then performing plastic surgery on my face around my jaw and chin. By the time I was four years old, I had endured seven rounds of surgery. I vaguely remember some of the later operations; I can still recall how unpleasant it felt, being tied to a hospital bed, being fed through tubes shoved down my nose, and having wooden sleeves holding my arms straight so I couldn't touch my face. I missed my family, I wanted to go home, and I wanted to sleep in real pajamas, not those goofy hospital gowns that are wide open in the back.