My son was admitted to the hospital on Monday with severe abdominal pain.  So severe that he was put on IV Dilaudid as a pain medication because the morphine wasn’t cutting it. After 2 CT scans appendicitis has been ruled out.  However, because of my own medical history (I have an undiagnosed auto-immune condition that includes inflammatory gastrointestinal symptoms), we are very concerned about him.

This diary is written in part to deal with my own anxiety and frustration, and also because I want to tell you what a great kid he is.  I’m a proud parent, and I can’t help it, so please bear with me.  I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep over the last few days, and I need to do this.

More after the flip . . .  

My son is 16 and recently returned last week from a trip to Japan which he took on his own dime. His grandparents are immigrants from Japan after the war.  Both experienced WW2 as adolescents.  His grandmother survived the Tokyo firebombing in March, 1945. His grandfather just missed being called up for military service.  When the war ended in 1945 he was about 13 years old and undoubtedly would have been called up to serve in Japan’s Homeland Defense had there been an American invasion.

I met my wife in law school in 1982, and Daniel was the  first child, arriving on April Fool’s Day seven years later.  It’s a standard lame joke of mine that he was born three weeks early because of his strange sense of humor.

Daniel has always been a perfect kid.  Sociable with both his peers and adults, he has an even temperament, a quick mind (he’s an honors student who recently aced his World History College Advanced Placement exam) and, yes, a very odd sense of humor.  He’s an award winning Latin student in school and taught himself to read and write Japanese in his spare time to get ready for his trip this summer.  He told me last night for the first time that he hopes to return to Japan and teach English to people there after he graduates from College.  Not as a life long career, but just for the life experience.  I have no doubt he will do this because once he sets his mind to achieving a goal he generally accomplishes it.

He began planning his trip to Japan 2 years ago.  He’d always been good about saving his money, and he redoubled his efforts in that regard.  He worked on learning the language, in part by watching Japanese anime films in the original Japanese after watching English translations.  he also developed a great fondness for Japanese pop music from listening to the anime soundtracks.  I can’t tell you how many downloads of Japanese anime series and music files are loaded on my home computer.  frankly I’m afraid to ask him.  I do know he’s burned over a hundred DVD and CD disks in order to free up memory on our home computer.

Last summer, his boy scout troop took a trip to Hawaii.  They arranged to perform the flag raising ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor (something the Park Service permits any Boy Scout troop to do if it’s scheduled enough in advance).  On an early morning last summer, he and his troop mates took the ferry over to the Memorial at the crack of dawn.  With them were a group of Japanese tourists.  Not surprisingly, my son engaged them in conversation.

When these tourists learned of his background and of his impending trip to Japan this summer, they told him that he should visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial to get a perspective on what the war ultimately cost Japan as well as what it had cost the United States.  He had no relatives in Hiroshima, and he hadn’t originally planned to go there, but on the spot made the decision to go in response to their plea.

Two weeks ago I spoke to him on the phone after he made his day trip to Hiroshima.  This was the 60th year after the atomic bombings that ended the War in the Pacific, and every day this summer there were special events scheduled in Hiroshima to commemorate that anniversary.  Here’s a link to some of the places he visited in and around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. We didn’t have long to talk but I could tell he had been very moved by what he had witnessed there.  I was looking forward to talking to him about what he had observed, and in looking through the photos he had taken during his day there.  I guess I’m still looking forward to that.

Last night, as I was helping him stay awake so he could take the 2 gallons of laxative medication he had to take to clean out his system for today’s colonscopy test I related to him things I had learned here at Daily Kos, such as the true story of the Brazilian man who was killed by London Police for looking too Muslim, and the story of the Afghani taxi driver who was toritured to death by an American soldier at Bagram.  This information upset him a great deal.  He told me how many people he spoke to in Japan this summer had a very negative opinion of America, and how hard it was not to agree with them after hearing these news items.

You see, like most kids of his age, he’s a natural idealist.  He wants to believe he lives in the greatest country in the world, and that this country truly lives up to the moral and democratic principles we like claim as our unique contribution to world history.  At heart he’s a patriot.  He loves his country.  That we have pursued an agressive war for no reason other than to fulfill the dreams of Neocon empire builders sickens him.  I told him it isn’t the country that has failed, but our criminal leaders.  I’m not sure he accepted that answer.  I’m not sure I do anymore either.

My wife is calling me to let me know he’s going in for his colonoscopy procedure soon, so I have to cut this short.  If you’ve been with me so far thanks for letting me vent.  I don’t know what the purpose of this diary is.  Maybe you can tell me.

Update [2005-8-18 12:46:43 by Steven D]: I posted this earlier this morning at Dkos.  The results of his colonoscopy are inconclusive.  He has some non-specific inflammation around the valve where the small intestine empties into the large intestine.  This may or may not be an indication of a more serious problem, or it may only be the result of exposing his intestinal tract to some unfamiliar bugs while he was in Japan, combined with the stress of traveling to a foreign country for the first time in his life.  We won’t know for sure unless he starts exhibiting more symptoms (pain, nausea, etc.) in the future,  or unless something in the biopsies they took from his colon indicates a more specific type of problem.  Naturally we are hoping for the best.  

The good news is that he will be discharged from the hospital later today, and his pain does seem to be lessening as well.  I can’t wait to have him home.