|
Welcome to Brendan's website! Please check in with us as often as you like to see how Brendan is doing, to read our stories, and to share yours! Please sign the guest book it means the world to us.
I watch you playing
Without a care,
It's hard to believe
The cancer is there.
You look so bright,
So happy and well,
If someone new met you
They couldn't tell.
Your strength is amazing,
Your courage so strong,
You've fought this disease
So well for so long.
It's from your strength
That I draw mine,
I know you'll come through this,
It'll just take time.
Carry on smiling,
I will too,
Through the hard times
I'll carry you.
You are my world,
The air that I breathe,
I know in my heart
You'll never leave.
Keep strong my love,
The battle has begun,
But with your strength
It will be won.
Lena Ford
Journal
Wednesday, January 9, 2008 6:42 PM CST It has been a long time. Many times I have wanted to update, but then some emotion got in the way. At first I thought I'll wait until Brendan is off treatment, then I felt "too soon", I'll wait until we get the MRD testing back, then I thought maybe after the port is removed. Each and every time I was afraid I would jinx things. Then I felt maybe it's just best we just let it go, quietly silently without fan fair, and cancer won't notice we were off treatment. Kind of slipped out of it's grasp without notice. Then run like hell and hope it never catches Brendan again.
Of course we are relieved to not have treatment, and Brendan is over the moon for not having a port. But we have a long road ahead, of waiting and praying and healing.
What truly brought me back to the journal was the devastating news of yet another classmate from The Morgan Center passing away.
I will never forget the day when Andrew was diagnosed with Leukemia. Brendan had been diagnosed just three months before. Dominick and I had brought Brendan into the clinic for chemo and counts. His hair that remained was coarse, as if it had been burned and he was swollen from steroids. He was preoccupied with a game, and when I looked up I saw a "new family" . They had that terrified look of just being told "your child has cancer". I remembered grabbing a piece of paper, and writing my phone number, the number to The Morgan Center and The Families Guide To Leukemia (our new bible). I handed it to Melissa's sister and said give this to them tomorrow, they'll need it.
In time they joined the school and became part of our support group. Over the years all of the moms have shared plenty of tears, laughs and a drink or two. And although we all fear the worst, we pray for the best. However, when the worst becomes the reality it tears through your heart with a swiftness and depth that is unimaginable.
How does a parent pick a casket for their own child, decide which toys to let go and which must stay to comfort them?
Andrew had just finished treatment and was going to have his port removed in the coming weeks. What exactly happened is unknown right now, but the tragedy is apparent just the same.
Please pray for Drew, Melissa and Logan.
I can not even begin to imagine their sorrow.
This I have borrowed from Kendall's site (Aimee always has the most beautiful and appropriate words.)
The mother/author has truly captured "it".
This was written by a cancer Mom, Carol, who lost her sweet little Jonathan in July. I think it's very honest, and reflects so much of what we feel.
I HOPE...
I hope you never have to hear the words, "Your child has cancer."
I hope you never have to hear, "The prognosis is not good."
I hope you never have to prepare to undergo radiation or
chemotherapy, have a port surgically inserted into their chest, be connected to IV poles.
Look at you with fear in their eyes and say, "Don't worry Mommy,everything will be okay.'
I hope you never have to hold your child as they vomit green bile.
I hope you never have to feed them ice chips for lunch.
I hope you never have to watch the "cure" you pray for slowly take away their identity, as they
lose their hair,
become skeletal,
swell up from steroids,
develop severe acne,
become barely or unable to walk or move,
and look at you with hope in their eyes and say,
"It's going to be okay, Mommy."
I hope that you never have to stay in the hospital for weeks, months, or years at a time, where there is no privacy, sleeping on a slab, with your face to the wall, where you cry in muffled silence.
I hope you never have to see a mother, alone, huddled, in a dark hospital corridor...crying quietly, after just being told, "There is nothing more we can do."
I hope you never have to watch a family wander aimlessly, minutes after their child's body has been removed.
I hope you never have to use every bit of energy you have left, with all of this going on around you to remain positive, and the feelings of guilt, sorrow, hope and fear, overwhelm you.
I hope you never have to see a child's head bolted to the table as they receive radiation.
I hope you never have to take your child home (grateful but so afraid) in a wheelchair because the chemo and radiation has damaged their muscles, 35 pounds lighter, pale, bald, and scarred.
And they look at you with faith in their eyes and say, "It's going to be okay Mommy."
I hope you never have to face the few friends that have stuck beside you and hear them say, "Thank God that is over with,"...because you know it never will be.
Your life becomes a whirl of doctors, blood tests and MRI's and you try to get your life back to "normal".
While living in mind-numbing fear that any one of those tests could result in hearing the dreaded words...
"The cancer has returned" or "The tumor is growing."
And your friends become even fewer.
I hope you never have to experience any of these
things...Because...only then...
Will you understand...
Thanks for checking in.
With a heavy heart,
Michele and Dominick
Read Journal History
Links:
|
|
