DanRochman.com

Okay, we’ve been back (from Costa Rica) for quite some time now, and I still haven’t posted anything. It’s been tough to write lately, but still… The short version is that my dad is still stable (but still in Intensive Care), and that Costa Rica was simply amazing, and that we’re going to be in Toronto May 11-16. The long versions follow.

My dad is still in the ICU at North York General Hospital, and may be for quite a while. He’d been making pretty good progress in most respects (breathing without a ventilator for up to 12 hours each day, and otherwise strong vital signs), but then the doctors noticed a pancreatic pseudocyst had formed. This is actually a fairly common complication of pancreatitis, and isn’t necessarily very dangerous, but it certainly isn’t a Good Thing either. Anyhow, the doctors decided they would operate on my dad, to install a sort of bypass that would allow pancreatic fluid to drain into the stomach. The bad news is that after opening my dad up, the doctor took one look at his insides and closed him up again - it appears that his innards are still much more fragile than had been supposed, and definitely too fragile for any such surgical manipulations to take place. So, my dad went through the risk and trauma of the (aborted) surgery pretty much for naught, and the news that his insides are in worse shape than previously thought was obviously not good to hear. On the other hand, the doctors now have a better understanding of the extent of the internal damage - scans and x-rays aside, there’s nothing like a doctor actually having a look inside you. And my dad’s recovering fairly well from the ordeals of the surgery, such as being under a general anaesthetic, and losing quite a bit of blood. That’s never trivial, but especially not when your condition is really fragile to begin with. The bottom line is that they closed up his abdomen, and waited for him to recover a bit from that before they inserted a tube into his belly that drained most of the accumulated fluid (such as in the pseudocyst) to the *outside*. He actually had a drain like this inserted once before, back in Florida, and now it seems he needs it again - at least until his belly remains fluid-free for a while. The general prognosis is that his overall vitals are strong, and tending to get stronger, but there’s no telling how long it will be before his pancreas (and digestive system in general) is back to anywhere near normal health and function. So we go day by day, and remain optimistic. Once he’s recovered some more from the drain being inserted (he’s running a bit of a fever again, after a long time without one - we’re hoping it goes away quickly and quietly), hopefully he’ll get back on track for being weaned off the ventilator, which would then (hopefully) be followed by the removal of his tracheotomy tube. The other recovery track is his digestive system - we expect that’ll take longer to heal.

As for Costa Rica, it was amazing. We spent the first few days in Playa Hermosa, scuba diving, plus a day off to go horseback riding in a wildlife reserve. After that we spent a couple of days near the (active!) Arenal volcano, near the touristy-but-cute little town of La Fortuna (de San Carlos). We did a treetop canopy tour of the rainforest, got to visit the Centro de Rescate las Pumas and the Ecocentro Danaus, and spent one night relaxing in volcanic hot springs at a nearby resort… Then we did a little whitewater rafting (pretty tame, but a lot of fun, and a great way to see a lot of wildlife), and flew back out of San Jose. Did I mention that my cell phone doesn’t work down there, and I didn’t bring my laptop? Also, this paragraph doesn’t do the trip justice, but it’s 7:30 AM here and I have to wrap this up and get to work. I’ll try to upload photos to the online gallery this weekend, but in the meantime I can link to the photo albums Em’s created at Snapfish: some of the photos she took, some of the photos I took, and some photos a woman we went scuba diving with took. [Free login account required to view photos at Snapfish - sorry.]

Finally, we’re booked for Toronto May 11-16. Although we’ll be spending a lot of time with my dad, and other family besides, we’ve got a lot of friends to try to see in a few short days. I’ll be contacting some people shortly to try to plan things out a bit, see who’ll be around, what’s going on those nights, et cetera. I’m really looking forward to it. Yow, it’s almost 7:45 now - I really must shave and get out the door…