I was running late getting home from work on May 19,2014 when my phone rang.
I was in the middle of closing up the center with my boss when I answered that call not knowing that it would be a call that would change my family’s life. My husband told me that the blood tests that the doctors had run on our son that morning had come back abnormal and I needed to get home ASAP. My son had swollen lymph nodes after coming back from vacation and we thought that it was a mild case of the mumps and had made a doctors appointment to double check. They said that they didn’t believe that it was, but they would still do the blood tests to make sure. Now after this phone call it felt as if all the blood rushed away from all of my extremities and I could barely bring myself to walk to my car.
I was never as scared as I was pulling into the driveway and walking into my house that day.
I looked at my little boy who looked up and smiled at me as my husband escorted me into our bedroom and sat me down. He proceeded to tell me that there was a hospital bed waiting for us in the Vermont Children’s Hospital and then he said the word. Leukemia. My heart shattered into a million pieces in that moment and all I could say was, “No! No! No!”, as the tears streamed down my face. This was my baby! What had gone wrong and how were we going to get through this? It took me a few minutes to collect myself, but I knew I had to be strong for my precious little boy sitting in the other room.
All I could think was that my baby boy had cancer.
I had just lost my grandfather in January to colon cancer and all I could think was that my sweet innocent little man who had just enjoyed a two week family vacation in Florida had cancer and how, no matter what, I could not take it away and fight it for him. I had watched my grandfather lose his battle and knew that if he was still here this would have broken his heart. I called my grandmother and asked her to come to the hospital with us.
I don’t remember the drive to the hospital.
There was so much information that was being thrown at us from all different directions and we were numb. I was glad that my grandmother had brought my Aunt and that my Father in Law were well enough aware to ask all of the right questions. All his father and I could do was hold our little boy and not let him see us cry.
His father and I spent ten days with him in the hospital.
His ten-year-old sister stayed with family and came up to visit at nights. It seemed like endless days of needle sticks, surgeries, medications, crying and watching my little boy weaken from all that he was going through. He was so upset with us for bringing him to the hospital. He said that he wasn’t sick until we brought him there and they made him sick. He truly did not comprehend how sick that he really was.
Fast forward to now. One year, six months and eleven days after his diagnosis and he has handled it with such strength and resilience. We are in the maintenance cycle of treatment and he has responded well to the treatment and continues to have no evidence of the disease. We still have two more years of treatment, but I know we have the strength to get through this.
Our new normal is making sure that he takes his oral chemotherapy every day. It is knowing what all of the medications are named. It is watching our child be put under anesthesia every three months now to have a lumbar puncture and intrathecal chemotherapy. It is making sure that the people around him are relatively healthy and making sure at his monthly blood draw that he has enough germ fighting blood cells so that he can stay in school.
Most importantly our new normal is letting him just be a kid.
It is enjoying every second we can spend doing things that we enjoy as a family. It is appreciating the little things in life and never taking a single second for granted. When all is said and done he is still an eight year old boy who is going to get bumps and bruises. He is going to have an attitude once and a while and want to get down in the dirt and play like any normal kid. It is knowing that in the whirlwind of everything going on that my son has taught me to face adversity with strength and determination. He is my hero. No matter what punches this monster has thrown at him he has thrown them back twice as hard with a resilience and determination that is unmatched. No I could not fight this monster for him, but he has taught me how to face adversity with grace and humor. I am so lucky to be his mother.
