Before we finish up our second month of chemo next week, I was revisiting my posts from the the first month.
The first five weeks of treatment are called induction... and they are pure hell. To say that we have learned a ton of information would be an understatement of epic proportion. Our first 8 days in the hospital will have to be a story for another day. But the learning curve cognitively, physically, emotionally, and spiritually during Induction is excruciating. It is hard to grapple with the fact that your child is so immeasurably sick AND now we are going to fill his body with poison that is going to make him even more sick. EVERY cancer is different but this first month of chemo is pretty much horrible for everyone. Not only is his body struggling from the leukemia, but now we are going to kill every cell in his body good & bad.
Read "Emperor of all Maladies; A biography of Cancer" by Siddhartha Mukherjee if you are an information junkie like Wil and Me. I would be happy to discuss this book with you over coffee or wine on my front porch. Heck just come by for a short visit whenever u can, but I digress...
Physically for us, induction had him sleeping on bathroom floors, crawling up steps, unable to walk for weeks, crying out in pain in sleep when he tried to roll over, wanting to just cut his stomach out because the pain was too much to handle, constant bleeding from every hole in his body, patches of hair loss, bleeding mouth sores that look like a branding iron had been used inside his mouth, sweating through beach towel after beach towel after beach towel, intense hunger on a primal level (from daily steroids) that only another chemo patient can understand, unable to sleep more than 90 minutes at a time... pure exhaustion like no soccer sprints at Coach Geerling's farm in 100degree heat could even compare. And those are just the physical symptoms he is willing to let me share with everyone.
Emotionally and spiritually the journey is ...well still a journey that he isn't ready to share completely yet. We want to help others who come along after us to understand they are not alone. For a little insight into my emotional pain... the VERY FIRST blog I searched for, I was looking for young men with t-cell ALL, had an amazing bio (strong, athletic, fighter, etc), so a few days into this process I clicked on the link to find out how other young men had dealt with T-cell ALL... the first line of the blog read "this blog is no long active ______ died from his battle with T-cell ALL 5 weeks ago..." The air was sucked out of the room and my brain screamed as I threw my phone across the room... I was searching for hope and literally the first time I reach out this is what I received... Even typing this I can feel the nausea, diarrhea, and panic filling up my body from that moment. That was just one of many emotionally devastating moments for me during induction that I had to swallow and suffer silently and I'm not the one with cancer! Many days later I revisited that blog and honored that young mans memory by learning what I could. He and everyone who has had to go through this process need to continue to tell their stories as we learn best from each other. #togetherwearestronger
I tell people all the time that I am taking every lesson I ever learned in my 24 years of teaching and applying it to my own growth during this process. I lead with our strengths and grow and adapt along the way.
Wil has his 8th surgery Monday. Many prayers and positive vibes are needed for ZERO leukemia cells in his bone marrow. It will be sent off to the Mayo Clinic in Michigan, so send those doctors good energy also!
It is a learning process for us all, not a journey I willingly go along, but thanks again for traveling this path with us. We are blessed with awesome people and can never say thank you enough! #hopeisstrongerthanfear
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