Thank You
Photo by Daria Shvetsova - Pexels
A week has almost gone by already. Perhaps I should have posted this update earlier, but I’ve been letting myself really sink into it as much as I can. Maybe it’s not much, but in a situation like this – in life, really – you take what you can get and you milk the good stuff.
On Friday we got a phone call from our Oncology team. They had assessed the scans that we have been waiting to see for months. The first CT scan since treatment began. For Violet’s protocol, which we have been told time and time again is fixed and explicit, we are to expect 4-5 rounds of chemo before assessment for surgery (then we can begin the “high dose/stem cell replacement” treatments and radiation). The unknown in the equation is whether or not to do the 5th round before surgery, or after, as the surgeons want as much possible minimization of the tumor to lessen the risks during operation.
After reviewing her scans, the surgical team has decided that it is already too small to bother operating on. All lesions has shrank – no new growths and no new sites – and, all in all, the chemo is working better than they’d hoped for.
This cancer, the stats say, is resistant to treatment at her age. Usually. Odds are, anyway.
But again, what are odds? Numbers. Data. We make meaning with it.
So the meaning I am making with this “data” is that we are winning. It’s that this battle we are waging for wellness is working. And we can all sink our teeth into this one and celebrate.
Violet and I go back to the hospital this morning to begin round 5. It’s a few nasty chemo meds again that we have seen before, notorious for nausea, but it’s nothing she can’t handle. And we know it’s doing its job.
I have been waking up in the middle of the night lately with anxiety, but not the kind I’d expect. Or maybe it is. The anxiety is around not being able to address my gratitude and appreciation in ways that feel even remotely on par with the generosity of the universe and the people in it. Since being here we have been so blessed beyond measure. We have received packages and notes and cards, gifts and coupons, jewelry and books, blankets and stuffies, dinners and school supplies - donations that baffle the mind from people that I care for all over the world and from all stages of my life. And “strangers”, too, that find resonance with our story have gone out of their way to support us and show us love. In an isolating situation like this one, I have never felt less alone.
I know I shouldn’t be anxious, and should just let that gratitude flow through me like rain, like Kevin Spacey advises at the end of American Beauty. But just thinking about the time and care that so many have given to us is just so humbling.
It’s an honour to be an excuse for so many to spread some love these days. Truly.
In the Children’s Hospital, there are murals all over the walls. In the elevator, there are pictures of animals and a rainbow of colored light that shifts from red to yellow to green to blue as you advance up the floors. When we get to the Oncology floor for each treatment period, there is a toy sitting on Violet’s bed welcoming her “back home” for awhile. And yet, when you go over to the old area – the Women’s Hospital where more of the grown-ups are treated – the walls are grey and the hallways reminiscent of typical clinical stereotypes, baren of whimsy.
It makes me think of all of the people in the world that have to go through “hard things” without this magic. Without this overwhelming love and support. Without a stock pile of toys to soothe the suffering.
Toys are just stuff. And in reality, we could find ways to feed ourselves on a dime through this as there is always Kraft Dinner in the cupboard at Ronald McDonald House. But simply being able to order dinner from the hospital room, not having to leave Violet and figure out how to cook and cart dinner from one place to another, not having to vie for cans of soup from the kitchen cupboard, has taken so much pressure off. Knowing if a medication comes up we couldn’t afford, or an unexpected trip to the vet or the dental surgeon (that’s tomorrow for Lucy, and a story for another day) won’t sink us, is a luxury we are well aware of the significance of.
To all of you who have considered us – helped fund my parents’ trips back and forth to care of Lucy, or helped pay or mortgage so we don’t lose our house, or helped us figure out how to homeschool these kids, or helped keep them occupied and distracted from the strange reality we are in – thank you. Truly. From every fibre of our being.