WHAT A WEEK!
Last Saturday, our family attended a Barn Bash potluck and dance at our parish. I had fully anticipated Dad and a few kids attending while I stayed home with Thomas recovering, since he was only on Post-Op Day 11, still with surgical tape over the incision that runs the entire width of his abdomen. However, his surgeon had cleared him for all activities and he was so strong and full of energy that our entire family attended! I watched in awe as Thomas played on the playground and then danced for 30 minutes straight.
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| Tired at the end of the dance |
Then after Mass on Sunday, two families joined us spontaneously for lunch out to celebrate Mary's birthday: Table for 20, please! Normalcy is so good for us!
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| Baked pears with chocolate for dessert |
On the medical front, the week involved my taking kids to two doctor's appointments and then taking Thomas to two separate labs for a total of five attempts to get his blood work done: fifth time was the charm! I also got to be refreshed by attending (still via video, unfortunately) the bi-monthly support meeting for cancer parents.
On Monday, after rushing from one of the doctor's appointments, I got to catch the latter half of the Thanksgiving Performance put on at our children's homeschool hybrid school. They recited memorized poems and skits while we ate a bountiful Thanksgiving potluck. It is medicine for the soul to experience normal human interaction. (No pics because the school's media policy doesn't allow us to share photos that include any other children than our own.)
Milestone alerts: Our second son has become an altar server! Our firstborn began behind-the-wheel driver's training! He will have three two-hour sessions this week, two next week, and one the following week.
On Thursday night, I had the privilege and joy to take the three oldest children to see Anastasia in Columbia, one and a half hours away. I have been by Thomas's side every day for a year and a half of medical trials while our older children have received so little of me. It was truly wonderful to spend 18 hours with them, to talk so much on the long drives, to dress up nicely, and to see live, professional theater. You know what else was wonderful? After a year and a half, I got an entire five-and-a-half hours of cumulative sleep and it was uninterrupted.
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| We ran into friends at the performance. |
On Friday, we participated in a team-building exercise hosted by Chris's employer: a pizza-cooking class with about 50 coworkers (again, still over video, unfortunately). I mostly ended up getting booted out by little Thomas (AKA Batman) who wanted to be the sous chef the entire time. It was a cute event.
I share here my words already posted on Facebook and CaringBridge memorializing our family's November 18 anniversary:
Today is the one-year anniversary of Thomas's 12-hour tumor resection surgery in which the surgeon, through painstaking effort and his 30 years' experience, was able to remove the tumor weighing nearly one pound and the size of a softball, even though it was attached to or entirely encasing the main portal vein, the celiac axis, the superior messenteric artery, and the infrahepatic IVC, and the abdominal aorta. (Medical folks will experience sufficient horror reading that.) In the 6 rounds of chemotherapy before the Nov. 18 surgery, the oncologist had maintained that to perform surgery "would be incredibly morbid" because of where the tumor was located. The chemotherapy never shrank the tumor, so ultimately surgery was being done under the same circumstances the tumor had been in since the get-go . . . and it did turn out to be "incredibly morbid." Thomas suffered severe "collateral damage," as they say in the cancer world. Today Thomas is a happy, blissfully ignorant 6-year-old boy, but as Chris and I walk through this day, we have to decide what we think about this anniversary. Those who have experienced medical trauma will understand how hard all these anniversaries are going to be for us parents: I, for one, haven't slept much for the last two nights and am having nightmares. We've decided to embrace today for the astounding success that it was: (1) Thomas's entire cancer was removed when medication couldn't do it, (2) Thomas survived, and (3) Thomas has remained NED (no evidence of disease) through his first nine months worth of scans so far. Our family faces many of Thomas's tragic anniversaries in the next two months, but this day we want to celebrate.
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