Jackson Wentworth Branscome: April Fool's, Easter and Sunshine

For those of you who know us, this story will come as no surprise and the irony will not be lost, as all of this happened on April Fool's Day!! So read and enjoy! (Although, out of respect for my husband, I am going to leave out certain parts of the process to protect his privacy and pride. But Betty, what he went through Thursday makes the polar bear exhibit a lot less embarrassing.) Some of you already know that John had an appointment for a routine colonoscopy Thursday, April 1 (April Fool's Day). Colon polyps run in John's family, but thankfully no colon cancer. We keep a close eye on the situation with a colonoscopy every three to four years. Jack went to spend the night with my parents Wednesday night so we could get up and go to Madison early the next morning for his appointment. John spent Wednesday night preparing for the procedure and I'm sure many of you know what I'm talking about, so I won't go into detail. John's doctor, Dr. Johnston and his partners, have an office at the new Baptist complex in Madison and Dr. Johnston is there on Thursdays. This saved us from having to drive into Jackson (or so we thought), so that was wonderful. Once the procedure was over, I got to go back and sit with John while we waited for Dr. Johnston to tell us what he found. John was still really out of it, but thankfully not as angry and confrontational as the last time. (He accused Dr. Johnston of stealing his clothes and then locked himself in the bathroom and security had to unlock the door to get him out.) John doesn't react well to anesthesia. It makes him crazy. So Dr. Johnston came in and told us he removed three very small polyps, and they looked good. Then his next words were, "However, we did find something, nothing really bad, but something that needs to be dealt with today." John is still out of it and only coming to to ask when he can have something to eat, so he was no help to me at this point. Dr. Johnson asked if John had been running a fever and having abdominal pain the last few days. I assured Dr. Johnston that John had not complained of anything, had been acting normal and had not been running fever. Well, his appendix were enlarged. He had an acute appendicitis and his appendix had to be removed immediately. That day!! So they sent him down the hall for a CT Scan to make sure they weren't dealing with anything else and the tests showed an acute appendicitis. All of this is going on and I really don't think John had any idea what we were doing, he kept asking everyone where his clothes were, when could he eat and telling anyone who would listen that he had been violated! Since John had not been having any pain, they wanted to be safe and rule out a mass in his appendix. So, they were going to remove his appendix and small areas of his colon around the appendix and run a biopsy just to be safe.

Now, let me give you a piece of advice, if you don't already know, try to avoid having surgery the Thursday before a holiday weekend. It's a bear!! Dr. Johnston assured me he would only let someone operate on John that he would let operate on his own children, even if it meant he had to call in a favor. He tried a couple of surgeons at Baptist, but they had already checked out for the weekend. So he called a surgeon he likes at St. Dominic's and that's where we were headed. And still, all John wanted to talk to Dr. Johnston about was whether or not he could stop and pick something up to eat on the way. We got to St. D, got admitted and a couple of hours later - John was in surgery. His parents came and stayed with me and brought me a much needed overnight bag and Jack stayed with my parents another night. And I missed him terribly! I don't like being away from Jack, especially at night. But thankfully, John did great after surgery and we were on our way home Friday around 11:00am. And yes, we stopped to get John something to eat!! Before we left, the surgeon, Dr. Johnson (not to be confused with the colon doc Dr. Johnston) stopped by to meet with us and tell us he put a rush on John's biopsy. He knew nothing he could say would make me relax, so he wanted to get the results as fast as he could, but with it being the weekend and Easter, it would probably be Monday before we knew anything. So imagine our surprise when Sunday night, I'm already in bed watching tv and John is about to get in the shower, our surgeon calls us from his house. I almost didn't answer because I knew it had to be bad for a doctor to call you on Easter from his house. But I answered and I'm glad I did - it was great news. John's biopsy came back clean. No mass, no cancer, everything great!! This was the second best thing about Easter!! Dr. Johnson knew I would be spending my entire Easter weekend worrying about the results and when he went by the hospital Sunday afternoon and saw the results were in, he had to call me and let me know. I kept thanking him and telling him that he went above and beyond the call of duty. He looked really young and John & I were a little concerned about him preforming the surgery (in fact, we weren't that crazy about him) but we were pleasantly surprised when all was said and done. Have any of you noticed how young some of the doctors, especially surgeons, are looking these days?

He performed a laparoscopic appendectomy and this required three incisions. John has been sore, but is doing really well. Dr. Johnson told him not to work this week, however, he is going back to work tomorrow. John's not going to miss an entire week of work. He promises me that he has a lot of paper work to catch up on and will be able to take it easy. But because he felt pretty crummy all weekend, we didn't get to go to church Easter Sunday. I don't like to miss church, but especially Easter Sunday. But there was just no way John could sit on a pew for an hour. And he is having to wear comfy, loose fitting pants because of his incisions. So no cute pictures of Jack in his cute Easter outfit. I'm going to let him wear it this Sunday and I'll get pictures then. I did take pictures Easter morning with his haul from the Easter bunny.

As I was working on this post this afternoon, our colon doctor, Dr. Johnston, called to check on us and said the biopsy of the polyps showed no sign of cancer. Clean polyps. He talked to me for a long time and answered a lot of my questions. If you ever need a colonoscopy, go to Dr. Johnston. We love him. In fact, we haven't met a Jackson doctor we didn't like. I had Jack at River Oakes and have been going to my OB/GYN there for years. Jack's pediatrician is in Madison. We just always get the best personal attention and personal follow up phone calls from our Jackson doctors. So now we are officially done with John's colon for another three years!!