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Our son Richie was diagnosed with Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma Stage IV on October 26, 2000. Richie underwent intensive chemotherapy and radiation treatment to fight this rare form of cancer. He beat the odds and was declared cancer-free in December of 2001. Unfortunately, on March 19, 2003 we received the devastating news. The cancer was back and this time in three places. It was revealed on the routine MRI scans that are done every three months. This time, it would mean chemotherapy, radiation, possible surgery and a stem-cell transplant. As our nation was going to war that night in Iraq, we found ourselves driving to the Bay Area to begin the battle on cancer once again.
September 2006 - Richie's cancer no longer stayed at bay and began to grow rapidly. He was sent home on hospice on October 5th. The cancer spread with a vengeance and claimed his life on Thanksgiving morning at 1:50 a.m.
Although, childhood cancer is one of those things that seem so absolutely unfair and completely out of the realm of understanding, our family is standing strong in their faith. We know that the Lord will provide strength and peace needed in spite of the storm we now face. Our family is surrounded by an amazing group of family and friends reaching out to us. We are so grateful for the support we have received and by all your encouraging messages we get on this website. Richie will forever be remembered for his courageous and strong spirit and how he handled everything that happened to him throughout his battle with this vicious cancer. He made an impact on everyones life he touched. He was truly a gift to us all.
New pictures on the "view photos" link up above - - and check out these albums -- just a glimpse of our summer fun.
SpiritWestCoast
JoshuaFest
Save The South
Journal
Wednesday, December 5, 2007 12:54 PST
(Thanks to all of you who have prayed for us and left us encouraging messages via the guestbook. We appreciate all of you so very much...)
Here is a post I started on October 11th and never quite finished. Some of it would have made more sense had I posted it then, but you are all pretty bright so I trust you will piece it together. I’m not really sure why I decided to work on it tonight. I’m supposed to be working on my talk for Sunday. I’m teaching in the main service again. So I guess what I am really doing is just procrastinating. Anyway this first part is almost two months old so put on your thinking cap.
I used to think that whoever it was that said; “ignorance is bliss” was a moron. I’m starting to rethink that a bit. The problem with being educated is that you know too much. Like if you read enough about grief and depression you discover how destructive they can be. Then when that is happening in your own life you can’t really deny it, even though you try really hard. Yeah, ignorance isn’t all bad. So anyway I was recognizing a lot of stuff in my own life and realizing that I can fool a lot of people but you always come home with the same guy you left with. That guy isn’t so easily deceived.
A few months ago I went to see a psychiatrist because I was not happy with the person I had become. I felt like I had lost a lot of passion for life, was not willing to take any risks any longer and frankly wasn’t a whole lot of fun to be around. My own self diagnosis proved relatively accurate; at least that’s what the doc said. The first visit was pretty lame because it didn’t seem like it had much to do with anything other than a medical history and a butt load of paperwork. But I had told myself before I went that I was really going to give it an honest try.
I went back a week later and about 15 minutes into the second appointment I decided I was done with this plan. Then when I figured it didn’t matter any more we just started talking and it was like a light went on inside my head. The doc totally had me figured out. Maybe I’m one of those textbook cases or something but all off a sudden things started making sense to me the way he was explaining it all. After that it was good talking to him as he helped me sort some stuff out.
Anyway that is the update on my mental health and corresponding treatment. I wasn’t really sure where to start and now that I see it in print that was a stupid place, but oh well what’s done is done.
Sheri has been encouraging me lately to update the site and I don’t really know what to say. Based on the way it is starting it should be quite the ramble by the time it is over. The last post was in May, a mere 5 months ago. I should be able to catch you all up in 100 pages or less.
The summer was insane. We ended up being gone close to 50 nights between mid June and Labor Day. We started with a 12 day family trip to Northern Washington via Yosemite. If you study a map you will see that Sparks to Washington by way of Yosemite is not at all the most direct route. It was a great time, just the three of us. We visited friends in Oregon and family in Washington and had a bunch of fun in between. Randy was sick one day but it only lasted 24 hours. I think he drank too much of the Merced River while we were rafting, but what do I know.
Then we were off to Ensenada on a mission trip. That was very cool. There were 23 of us total and they were a great group to work with. We had a lot of fun on the trip and we built a house for a family that didn’t have one. We got to see our friends Bill, Misty and their children. It was bittersweet to see where Richie had been and talk with people who still remembered him. It was a cool trip and I will be going back again this summer with another group of students.
After the trip to Ensenada it was off to Middle School camp. From there we went on an annual camping trip with some friends. After that we left for Spirit West Coast. The day after we got home from Monterey we left for High School camp for a week. Then we came home for a little while. Sheri was glad to spend a few nights at home. I was a little bummed that we didn’t have another trip planned. I’m pretty sure I could live in my RV.
Labor Day Weekend was Joshua Fest, another 3 day music festival. We went to that and had some fun. Summer wasn’t quite over for us as Sheri and I escaped up to Lake Tahoe for a weekend and then squeezed in one more trip because we had some friends getting married up at the lake. But sadly, and I mean that, the summer is over. Winter is coming to the Sierras and as much as I want to deny it the overnight lows can’t be ignored. Winter sucks.
The summer was pretty intense and I’m already making plans to do it again next year. What can I say, I like to have a good time. And we did. We spent a lot of time together and a lot of time getting to know students and it was good.
I almost forgot. My sister and her family came over from England for a visit as well. We had a great time with them. Kids are funny when they misbehave, especially if they aren’t yours. Her children are 3, 6 and 9 and it was fun having little ones in the house again. Plus my sister is a little obsessed with their schedule and diet. So I felt a certain obligation to be the fun uncle and sabotage all of the structure. I think marshmallows and chocolate syrup make a great lunch. And once the marshmallow bag is open you may as well eat them all because you know they are just going to get dried out and nasty if you put them back in the cupboard.
They have been in England for almost 5 years now and we always wanted to go over and visit them but could never work it out between the cancer and our regular schedule. Now we partied away all of our travel money so I’m not sure we are going to make it before they move back to the states.
Even with all the cool stuff going on there are still a lot of moments of intense sorrow. There is virtually not a time that goes by that we don’t think about and miss Richie. Sometimes we miss him with a smile on our face and sometimes we miss him with a tear in our eye. Other times we just sit and cry. There are a lot of things that trigger those memories. There really is nowhere for us to go that is absent of Richie’s memory. Of course it is all over our house and our church, which doubles as my job.
A few days ago I was at Reed High where Richie went to school and I was sure I was either going to have an anxiety attack or some other emotionally based complete meltdown. Just about everywhere we went this summer reminded us of Richie as well. I suppose somehow we would be diagnosed as being better than we were a few months ago but I’m not sure I believe that to be true all the time. And honestly there is literally nothing that anybody can do about it. We will carry this burden with us the rest of our lives.
I guess it is a little harder right now as this is when it all started to go bad last year. Frankly we weren’t entirely honest last year. We knew after they did the scope on September 22nd last year that Richie was terminal. He asked us not to tell anybody because he wanted things to be as normal as they could be for as long as they could be. So that is what we tried to do. For a 15 year old he was pretty bright. He was right, as soon as people figured out he was dying they started freaking out just like he said they would. Not that it is abnormal to freak out when you know somebody is about to die.
So anyway, right now there are a lot of markers for us from this time last year. Like the entire journey they create mixed emotions. Some of the memories are great and some of them are painfully sad. Sometimes it seems like Richie has been dead forever and sometimes it seems like it was yesterday. Sometimes I am pretty emotional for what seems like a good reason and sometimes I just weep for no apparent reason at all.
And sometimes I just sit in awe of the fact that I even got to be involved in his life at all. What made me so special as to be a part of such an amazing life? It has been almost a year now and I still hear people talking about what an impact he had or is still having. It is truly amazing to me that I was a part of that.
We are definitely back in the game and in a lot of sense living like we used to. Friday we had 10 people over for dinner for no apparent reason and we are trying to make arrangements for one last RV trip before I winterize it. Last weekend was busy from Friday night all the way through the high school worship on Monday night. So the pace is a lot like it used to be and laughter has definitely returned to the Shannonranch. After all, if it isn’t fun why bother.
And now back to real time. This part was done Dec 4th and 5th. On Friday I went down to Ensenada with a group to build a house over the weekend. We drove 15 and a half hours to get there. Saturday and Sunday were spent building and Monday morning it was back on the road for 14 hours. Who does that?
It was an amazing trip though. It’s a long story about how it came about so I’ll skip that part. But basically I went down there with 4 people I knew pretty well, 3 people I knew a little bit and 13 people I had only met once and that is when they signed up to go. I’m pretty sure when we got to Ensenada they were all wondering what in the world they had agreed to and what the hell I was doing leading the group. On the day we arrived it was the biggest rain storm they had had in the last 18 months. Roads were flooded and washed out and the wind was blowing debri everywhere and we had to drive through some fog just to keep it spicy. So it was a little nutty at first.
But then we went out to the job site and met the family we were building for. All of a sudden things started to make sense to people. And by the end this group of strangers morphed into this team focused on building a home and more for this family that had spent that same stormy Friday night sleeping in an adobe building with a tarp for a roof. They raise chickens to supplement their income and for their own food. There was nowhere else for the chickens to live except in the same adobe house. So yeah, once again God was pretty amazing.
At the same time it was a tough trip. I was really missing Richie before I went and thinking about all the cool stuff he did in Ensenada made it better and worse all at the same time.
While I was gone Sheri put a some clips of old movies on the computer to save them and make it easier to view them. This morning she showed me some of them dating back to his first treatment in 2001. It reminded me of how truly resilient he was. Just a bald 10 year old running around having a bunch of fun. I think the cancer wore on him by the third time though. It’s like a line in the song that was part of the slide show for his service. “Jesus I’m ready to come home.” I think he really was.
I’m really starting to analyze my own reality lately. Some of it is stirred by this teaching that I am preparing. There, at least I’m thinking about it so this post isn’t entirely an act of procrastination.
Today I was questioning my own resiliency. I was just sitting in my room after putting my shoes on and thinking about the surgeries. Have you ever sat in a waiting room while somebody was in surgery? It’s a brutal experience most of the time. People die in surgery. Doctors find bad stuff in surgery. Everybody is in a lot of pain after surgery. Richie had 16 surgeries that I could remember. They lasted anywhere from 1 hour to 10 hours. I probably spent 80 hours waiting for Richie to come out of surgery. Surgeries were hard on me. Sometimes the anxiety would make me almost hurl.
I can only really dwell on stuff like that for so long before I start to question my own sanity. It’s odd. It helps me to deal with it in some sense. Kind of like letting out a big breath. Sort of like, “Ok I said it out loud and now people know and I feel better.” But at the same time I feel like I can only let out a little at a time because if I’m not careful the damn will just break and it will all come out at once and destroy me in the process. Yeah, analyze that.
Thanksgiving came and went and was good and bad and happy and sad. We stayed home and the Sullivans and my Mom came over and everybody did a little cooking so nobody had to do a bunch of cooking. It worked out, as I just sat and watched football most of the day. I didn’t even really want to eat but in the end I did. It takes a lot of work to keep my weight up so I figured I better. It was good to be around people that I didn’t have to put on a happy face for. I guess it was the best it could be.
The day after Thanksgiving was the one year mark since Richie died. Sheri and I intentionally didn’t plan anything and ended up just spending most of the day together. We went up to the cemetery and hung out for a bit. As luck would have it we got there when Evan was there. He sat for a while and played his guitar which made it really cool. We didn’t really talk but we all knew what was going on. It was just a good moment.
There was a certain sense of closure to having survived the first year. I felt like we had done most of the firsts that we would after Richie’s death. First Christmas, first birthday etc. I am starting to think it really doesn’t matter though. Some days are just way harder than others and that may never change.
I know I’ve said it before and maybe I just repeat it for myself since I’m sure I never realized it, but don’t ever assume you understand somebody else’s story.
I didn’t really know where to start this thing and I don’t really know where to end it either. There is no way I can really catch you up on what has been happening since May other than to say there have been some really great times and some really hard times. And sometimes those times are at the same time.
God Bless
Rich
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