Cancer

My baby has cancer.

Four words no mom ever wants to say.  My baby has cancer. 

13 days ago my son Jeremy started coughing.  Not out of the ordinary, seeing as how he's 6, he picks colds like I pick up socks and it was almost April, which puts us in the height of allergy season. So, I got out the Flovent and the Ventolin and I kept saying "I'll call the allergist tomorrow".  I never did. 

On April 5th he couldn't sleep through the night.  He was screaming in pain, he was a little gray, and we decided I should take him to the ER.  They took an xray and decided he was extremely constipated, and sent him home to take miralax and this too shall pass.  There was a shadow on his lung, which she dismissed as a viral thing, and she noticed a heart murmur, which she dismissed as normal under the circumstances.  I trust doctors, they go to school for this, so I took him home.

On April 7th he still couldn't sleep through the night, this time we went to the pediatrician.  He ordered a chest xray saying it couldn't be pneumonia because he didn't have a fever, but better be safe than sorry.  This xray showed significant lung problems and an enlarged heart.  Back to the pediatrician, who referred us to the Pediatric Cardiologist.  I wish I could say that was the scariest profession I had ever met. 

On April 11th we went to the Pediatric Cardiologist, who did an ultrasound on site.  They found a "mysterious mass" in Jeremy's chest.  So many things go through your head as you drive your baby to the hospital.  Way in the back, pushed down is the word cancer.  Traffic is a bear, but we don't dare deviate from what the GPS says because we've never been to this hospital before.  The on call Cardiologist meets us at the door, I've never seen a doctor waiting for a patient before.  4 nurses are waiting for us too.  He says he's going to be involved, but he's basically handing us off to the ICU doctor because this is no longer a heart problem.

Next came a battery of tests, blood work, CT, machines and wires and tubes.  All on a kid who is sick of the doctor, sick of medicine and just plain sick. 

A man walks in to the room, soft spoken but tall.  Immediately I know who this is.  This is the Pediatric Oncologist.  Oncologist.  The word echoes in my head like a cannon.  He takes us into another room and gives us the worst news we have ever been given.  Jeremy has cancer.  April 11, 2014 - the day Jeremy has cancer.  There's a large mass in his chest, a lymphoma, a tumor.  It's pushing on his heart and lungs.  It's compromised his airway and part of his superior vena cava, the big blood vessel to his heart.  It's not the kind you operate on, its the kind you poison slowly.  Only, they can't start the chemo until they biopsy it and they can't biopsy it because to sedate him would be fatal.  So we have to try to shrink it with steroids, then hope it gets small enough to stop sitting on his airway, so they can biopsy it and put in a central line for the chemo. 

He'll be in the hospital for a month, treatment comes in waves, with the first six months being the hardest. 

He will not finish kindergarten with his class, he'll be lucky to start first grade with his friends. 

He is six years old, about to face a literal fight for his life. 

My baby has cancer.