Wishing it could be me

There's nothing on this earth worse than watching your child be sick, and I've watched more than my share of it.
My younger son was born with a birth defect that required a number of surgeries to correct, and the corrective surgery left him more prone to kidney infections, and as we would find out much later, colon cancer.
I still cringe whenever I watch a child being taken into an operating room on television.
Michael had attention-deficit disorder with hyperactivity, and by the time he reached adolescence, he had depression, which he dealt with by drinking and doing drugs. He got sober 10 years ago, and went back to school in Savannah, Ga.
Of course, that meant he had no insurance, so when he started having digestive problems, the doctors tried a wait-and-see tactic. They waited and he got sicker and sicker. By the time he was admitted to the hospital, a colon blockage had nearly killed him. He was in renal failure, and only one kidney started working again.
The doctors had no choice but to do surgery, and they found Stage 3 colon cancer. After radiation, he developed another blockage and the doctors did nothing again until he was 105 pounds. For six weeks he couldn't keep any food down and he was in terrible pain. Finally, they admitted him and did surgery ro remove the blockage. They found a few stray cancer cells, so his surgeon told him he would die.
Fortunately, we got him an appointment with an oncologist at Duke University Medical Center -- one who is willing to fight as hard as Michael is for his life.
He had chemo and has had no evidence of cancer again, but he has had severe abdominal pain in recent weeks and the doctors can't figure out where it's coming from. He has symptoms of another blockage, but a CT scan showed no blockage.
So we wait. At least these doctors are willing to work at finding the problem as soon as it develops.
I'm going out there tomorrow night, hoping the doctors can figure it out by then, and if he needs surgery, I'll be there, and I'll get that same awful feeling when they wheel him off to the operating room that I got when he was a baby, a toddler, an adolescent and an adult. That's because he's still my baby, and I still wish I could go through it for him.