Family Emergency

Last Friday, my mom and niece, Maila came over for lunch. While they were here, we asked my brother, Russell to come over, but he said he couldn't because he and his wife, Gigi, had some running around to do. Shortly after my mom left, I was getting the kids ready for their naps, my mom called me hysterically crying, I couldn't even understand her, I could only make out the words: "Russell, Surgery, NOW" So being that my mom speaks broken English and her Filipino was also hard to understand through her sobs, I told her I'd call her back. I called Russell directly. He explained to me that he hadn't been feeling well, was coughing up blood and was having shortness in breath. He went to get a chest x-ray and the doctor informed him that he had some sort of metal material, the size of a dime lodged in his right lung and it needed to be removed immediately! They said he must have swallowed something. With alarm in his voice, he said he and Gigi were on their way to to hospital.

Now, it was my turn to panic. My mom doesn't do well with information like this because she is a stress case and automatically thinks the worst. As soon as I gathered myself, I called Todd at work and told him he needed to come home right away so we could go to my brother's house to be with the kids, who were still at school. In times like these, as family, we need to be there for each other.

Todd picked up my mom on the way home from work and we headed to my brother's house together. Gigi dropped Russell off at the hospital, so she could pick the kids up from school. By the time we got to Corona, (where they live) Gigi was just getting home with the kids, then she and my mom left to be with Russell at the hospital. The kids were a MESS, the girls, Maya and Leah were crying uncontrollably and Allan, just seemed like he was concerned, but didn't want to show any emotion. To take their minds off of what was going on with their daddy, I started doing their homework with them and when we were done with that, I had them write an essay about how they felt about what was going on with their daddy. They said they were scared and that they wanted him to feel better. Allan wrote that he was afraid that he wouldn't come back, and that is when he started to cry. I also started to cry! Goodness kids sure know how to pull at your heart strings!

Not long after the kids finished their writing assignments, Russell comes walking through the door. It was a flood of emotions. My first emotion was instant relief. I was so thankful that he was ok and able to walk and talk and explain everything that he went through. It was a quick surgery and they were able to go through his mouth to remove the material, so they didn't have to make an incision, which everyone was thankful for. The only visible strain that we could see was broken blood vessels in his left eye. Since they went through his mouth, he gagged during the surgery and the strain cause the blood vessels to break. Other than that, he was perfectly fine. THANK THE LORD FOR THAT!!!
The foreign object in Russell's right lung

It appears to be some sort of dental material

This is a scale to see the size of it