A couple days ago out of the clear blue, when life was on it's normal course, my 10 year old son was diagnosed with Leukemia. It's shocking, and I've spent hours crying. Sometimes it comes in waves, sometimes it's triggered watching him put through these horrible procedures. Sometimes it's a result of walking by his empty room and the silence in the house without him. I've had to summon all my strength to keep a game face on in front of him and his siblings.
Everyone faces challenges in their life, but when life hits you in the stomach this hard it takes your breath away. Now I'm stumbling through this "new normal" dazed and confused. The lonely nights have been the worst. The only place I find peace is in exercise, writing, and in the company of my fiancé.
I've researched B-cell Lymphblastic Leukemia ad nauseam, trying to do everything possible to understand how we can win this battle. As a dad I've done everything I can to distract this little guy from the war he is waging whether it's ordering up Indian food on door-dash for him, hooking his X-box up from home to the hospital television, or making him laugh.
He's on I.V. fluids that make him have to urinate literally every hour or two. The poor kid's sleep is broken because he has to go so often in the middle of the night. He has to use a hand-held urinal because they are measuring his output. Naturally I didn't miss an opportunity to make him laugh when I stood up tonight stone faced and said I have to goto the bathroom and reached for the urinal at the foot of his bed.
"Dad you can't pee in that!"
"What do you mean?" I asked, and I fell on his bed both of us laughing.
He was miserable yesterday when I told him we had to walk because his back was still hurting from soreness at the bone marrow biopsy site. I got him into the hallway and after we walked a little bit I looked at him and said "listen I'm going to teach you how to windsurf".
He looked at me confused, and I said to him dead seriously "you just step on here, and you go" pointing to his I.V. cart.
He smiled, "Dad we'll get in trouble, you can't do that."
"What do you mean, this is what you do," I said stone-faced.
"Dad..."
"No really this is what you do, get on" I told him.
He smiled and hesitantly stepped on, and of course I gave him a hard shove and he was gone like the wind laughing.
When I drove in to the hospital tonight I was distracted and drove by the main entrance. A little further up I came upon the emergency room and a heaviness came upon me. As I looked at the emergency room sign the memories of a few days ago came rushing back. Our whole life had changed in a fleeting moment inside of room 11. I will never forget driving there thinking my son was maybe anemic or had a cold only to be told he had a malignancy in his blood.
We thank you for the outpouring of support we've received over the past few days.
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