COLTON TOUGHS IT OUT
That next month, the cast came off. With the cancer scare and kidney
stones behind us, I spent a couple of months learning to walk again, first
with a walking cast, then with a pretty nasty limp, slowly working my
atrophied muscles back to health again. By February, I final y achieved
some independence—just in time for a district board meeting of our church
denomination in Greeley, Colorado, set for the first week in March.
“You need to get away,” Sonja told me a couple of weeks before the
board meeting. “Just get away and have a little fun.”
Now, here we were at the Butterfly Pavilion. A monarch butterfly fluttered
past, its bright orange wings segmented in black like stained glass. I
breathed a prayer of thanks that our trip had happened at al .
Two days before, on Thursday, Colton had begun tel ing Sonja that his
stomach hurt. I was already in Greeley, and at the time, Sonja was teaching
a Title 1 class at Imperial High School. Not wanting to put the school to the
expense of a substitute, she asked our good friend Norma Dannatt if she
could watch Colton at her home so that Sonja could go to work. Norma,
who was like a favorite aunt to our kids, immediately said yes. But at
midday, Sonja’s cel phone rang. It was Norma: Colton’s condition had
taken a nosedive. He had a fever with chil s and for most of the morning
had lain nearly motionless on Norma’s couch, wrapped in a blanket.
“He says he’s freezing, but he’s sweating like crazy,” Norma said, clearly
concerned. She said Colton’s forehead was covered in beads of sweat as
big as teardrops.
Norma’s husband, Bryan, had come home, taken one look, and decided
Colton was sick enough that he should go to the emergency room. Sonja
cal ed me in Greeley with the news, and just like that, I saw our trip to
celebrate the end of a string of injury and il ness being cancel ed by . . .
il ness.
Sonja checked out of work early, scooped up Colton from Norma’s
house, and took him to the doctor, who revealed that a stomach flu was
working its way around town. Through that night, our trip remained up in the
air. Separately, in Greeley and Imperial, Sonja and I prayed that Colton
would feel wel enough to make the trip and by morning, we got our answer:
yes!
During the night, Colton’s fever broke and by afternoon on Friday, he
was his old self again. Sonja cal ed to tel me: “We’re on our way!”
Now, at the Butterfly Pavilion, Sonja checked her watch. We were
scheduled to meet Steve Wilson, the pastor of Greeley Wesleyan Church,
and his wife, Rebecca, for dinner that evening, and the kids stil wanted to
get in a swim at the hotel pool. There was zero chance of them swimming
in Imperial in March, so this was a rare opportunity. “Okay, we should
probably head back to the hotel,” Sonja said.
I looked at her and then at Colton. “Hey, bud, it’s time to go. Are you stil
sure you don’t want to hold Rosie?” I said. “Last chance to get a sticker.
What do you think?”
Emotions played over Colton’s face like sunshine and clouds in a fast-
moving weather front. By now, even his big sister had been ribbing him a
little about being afraid. As I watched, Colton narrowed his eyes and set
his jaw: he wanted that sticker.
“Okay, I’l hold her,” he said. “But just for a little bit.”
Before he could change his mind, we al trooped back into the Crawl-A-
See-Um, and I corral ed the keeper. “This is Colton, and he wants to give it
a try,” I said.
The keeper smiled and bent down. “Okay, Colton, are you ready?”
Stiff as a board, our son held out his hand, and I bent over and cradled it
in my own.
out flat and stil . Rosie is very gentle. She won’t hurt you.”
The keeper raised his hand, and Rosie sidled over to Colton’s hand and
back to the keeper’s waiting hand on the other side, never even slowing
down. We al broke into cheers and clapped for Colton as the keeper
handed him his sticker. He had faced his fear! It was a big victory for him.
The moment seemed like icing on the cake of a perfect day.
As we left the Butterfly Pavilion, I reflected back over the past several
months. It was hard to believe that the broken leg, the kidney stones, the
lost work, the financial stress, three surgeries, and the cancer scare had al
happened in half a year’s time. In that moment, I realized for the first time
that I had been feeling like I’d been in a fight. For months, I’d had my guard
up, waiting for the next punch life could throw. Now, though, I felt completely
relaxed for the first time since the previous summer.
If I’d let my mind rol with that boxing metaphor just a little longer, I
might’ve fol owed it to its logical conclusion: In a boxing match, the fighters
absorb some vicious blows because they’re ready for them. And usual y,
the knockout punch is the one they didn’t see coming.
FOUR
SMOKE SIGNALS
Later that evening, with a swim under their belts, Cassie and Colton sat in
a big round booth at the Old Chicago Restaurant in Greeley, Colorado,
coloring happily while Sonja and I chatted with Pastor Steve Wilson and his
wife, Rebecca. We had already chowed down on some terrific Italian food,
including the usual kid favorites—pizza, spaghetti, and garlic bread.
Steve was senior pastor of a church of between fifteen hundred and two
thousand people—nearly as many people as lived in our hometown of
Imperial. It was a chance for Sonja and me to get to know another pastor in
our district and to get some ideas on how other pastors do ministry. We
planned to visit Steve’s church, Greeley Wesleyan, the next day. Sonja
especial y wanted to get a look at how the church’s Sunday morning
children’s program worked. Rebecca divided her time between the grown-
up conversation and coloring with the kids.
“Wow, Colton, you’re doing a real y good job coloring that pizza!” she
said. Colton offered a thin, polite smile but had fal en unusual y quiet. Then,
a few minutes later, he said, “Mommy, my tummy hurts.”
Sonja and I exchanged a glance. Was it the stomach flu coming back?
Sonja laid the back of her hand against Colton’s cheek and shook her
head. “You don’t feel hot, hon.”
“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Colton said.
“I don’t feel so good, either, Mommy,” Cassie said.
We figured it was something they ate. With both kids feeling under the
weather, we ended our dinner early, said good-bye to the Wilsons, and
headed back to the hotel, which was just across the parking lot from the
restaurant. As soon as we got the door to our room open, Colton’s
prediction came true: he upchucked, beginning on the carpet and ending,
as Sonja whisked him into the tiny bathroom, in the toilet.
Standing in the bathroom doorway, I watched Colton’s smal form bent
over and convulsing. This didn’t seem like any kind of food poisoning.
Gotta be t
hat stomach flu, I thought. Great.
That was how the evening began. It continued with Colton throwing up
every thirty minutes like clockwork. Between times, Sonja sat in an
upholstered side chair with Colton on her lap, keeping the room’s ice
bucket within reach in case she couldn’t make it to the bathroom. About
two hours into this cycle, another kid joined the party. As Colton was in the
bathroom, heaving into the toilet with Sonja kneeling beside him, a
steadying hand on his back, Cassie ran in and threw up in the tub.
“Todd!” Sonja cal ed. “I need a little help in here!”
Great, I thought. Now they both have it.
Or did they? After we were able to move both kids back to the bedroom,
Sonja and I put our heads together. Colton had seemed to kick that
stomach flu the day before. And al day long at the Butterfly Pavilion, he
was his normal self, completely happy except for the strain of holding
Rosie to get that sticker. Cassie had held Rosie too . . . could Goliath
tarantulas trigger a case of double upchuck?
No, dummy, I told myself and pushed the thought aside.
“Did the kids eat the same thing at the restaurant?” I asked Sonja, who
by then was lying on one of the double beds with one arm around each of
our two green-at-the-gil s kids.
She looked at the ceiling and thought for a moment. “I think they both had
some pizza . . . but we al had pizza. I think it’s that flu. Colton probably
wasn’t over it quite yet, and he passed it along to Cassie before we got
here. The doctor said it was pretty contagious.”
No matter what, it looked like our relaxing, post-turmoil celebration trip
was abruptly coming to an end. And a few minutes later, I heard the magic
words that seemed to confirm my thoughts: “Mommy, I feel like I’m gonna
throw up again.”
Sonja snatched up Colton and hustled him to the toilet again, just in the
nick of time.
When the pink light of dawn began peeking through the curtains the next
morning, Sonja was stil awake. We had agreed that at least one of us
should stil go visit Greeley Wesleyan and get some large-church ministry
knowledge we could export to Imperial, so I tried to get at least a little
sleep. That left Sonja with nursing duties, which included an almost hourly
trek back and forth to the bathroom with Colton. Cassie had gotten sick
only one other time during the night, but whatever this bug was, it seemed
to have latched onto our little boy’s innards and dug in deep.
We checked out of the hotel early and drove over to the Greeley home of
Phil and Betty Lou Harris, our close friends and also superintendents for
the Wesleyan church district that includes al of Colorado and Nebraska.
The original plan had been that our two families would attend the Wilsons’
church together that morning. Now, though, with a pair of sick kids, we
decided that Sonja would stay at the Harrises’ home. Betty Lou, sweet lady
that she is, volunteered to stay home and assist.
When I got back from church just after lunch, Sonja gave me the status
report: Cassie was feeling a lot better. She had even been able to eat a
little something and keep it down. But Colton continued to vomit on a
clockwork basis and had been unable to hold anything down.
Colton was in the Harrises’ living room, huddled in the corner of the huge
couch on top of a blanket/drop cloth with a bucket standing nearby just in
case. I walked over and sat down beside him.
“Hey, buddy. Not doing so great, huh?”
Colton slowly shook his head, and tears wel ed up in his blue eyes. I
might’ve been in my thirties, but over the last few months, I’d learned only
too wel what it was like to feel so sick and miserable that you just wanted
to cry. My heart hurt for my son.
“Come here,” I said. I pul ed him into my lap and looked into his little
round face. His eyes, usual y sparkling and playful, looked flat and weak.
Phil walked over and sat down beside me and reviewed the symptoms:
abdominal pain, profuse vomiting, a fever that had come and gone. “Could
it be appendicitis?”
I thought about it for a moment. There was certainly a family history. My
uncle’s appendix had burst, and I’d had a wicked case of appendicitis in
col ege during the time Sonja and I were dating. Also, Sonja had had her
appendix out when she was in second grade.
But the circumstances here didn’t seem to fit the bil . The doctor in
Imperial had diagnosed him with stomach flu. And if it was appendicitis,
there would be no reason Cassie would be sick too.
We spent Sunday night with the Harrises in Greeley. By morning, Cassie
had completely recovered, but Colton had spent a second night throwing
up.
As we packed our duffel bags and headed outside to load up the
Expedition, Phil gazed at Colton, cradled in Sonja’s arms. “He looks pretty
sick to me, Todd. Maybe you should take him to the hospital here.”
Sonja and I had discussed that option. We had sat in emergency room
waiting areas with a sick kid before, and our experience was that we could
probably make the three-hour drive back to Imperial before we would be
seen in the emergency room of a metro-Denver hospital. So instead, we
cal ed ahead to Imperial and made an appointment with our regular family
doctor, the one Colton had seen the previous Friday. I explained our
reasoning to Phil. He said he understood, but I could tel he was stil
worried. And by the time we’d been on the road for an hour or so, I began
to think that maybe he had been right.
For Sonja, our first red flag waved when we stopped at a Safeway just
outside Greeley to buy Pul -Ups. Colton, who had been potty-trained for
more than two years, had tinkled in his underwear. It worried Sonja that he
didn’t even protest when she laid him down in the backseat of the
Expedition and helped him into a pair of Pul -Ups. Under normal
circumstances, he would have been indignant: “I’m not a baby!” Now,
though, he didn’t utter a peep.
Instead, once strapped back into his car seat, he only clutched his bel y
and moaned. Two hours into the drive, he was crying constantly, stopping
about every thirty minutes to throw up again. In the rearview mirror, I could
see the heartbreak and helplessness on Sonja’s face. Meanwhile, I tried to
focus on the goal: get him to Imperial, get some IVs in him, stop the
dehydration that surely must be setting in as this flu ran its course.
We reached Imperial in just under three hours. At the hospital, a nurse
took us back to an examination room pretty quickly, with Sonja carrying
Colton, cradling his head against her shoulder the way she had when he
was an infant. Within a few minutes, the doctor who had seen Colton on
Friday joined us, and we brought him up to date on the situation. After a
brief exam, he ordered blood tests and an Xray, and I think I took a breath
for the first time since we rol ed out of Greeley. This was progress. We
were doing something. In a short while, we’d have a diagnosis, probably a
prescription or two, and Colton would be
on the way to recovery.
We took Colton to the lab, where he screamed as a tech tried her best
to find a vein. That was fol owed by Xrays that were better only because we
convinced Colton that there were no needles involved. Within an hour, we
were back in the exam room with the doctor.
“Could it be appendicitis?” Sonja asked the doctor.
He shook his head. “No. Colton’s white blood cel count isn’t consistent
with appendicitis. We are concerned, though, about his Xrays.”
I looked at Sonja. It was at that moment we realized we’d been banking
on a real y nasty virus. We were completely unprepared for something
more serious. The doctor led us into the hal way, where there was already
an Xray clipped to an il uminator. When I saw what was in the picture, my
heart dropped into my stomach: The Xray of our son’s tiny little torso
showed three dark masses. It looked for al the world as if his insides had