Cancer. As a parent, that word (along with many other terrifying words) fleetingly passes through your mind. But you push it away because your children are healthy. Never any cause for concern. And something like cancer would present itself in such a way that we would know what it is, right? Never in million years did we think our last 19 days would proceed like this.
Austin had been complaining of some knee pain since January. He complained semi-often, but he continued to play soccer and work out with the same intensity as before so we thought nothing of it. He's been growing a TON, he always works his hardest while at practice and was going to the gym on a regular basis. To us, it seemed like some irritation, the beginning of an injury, etc. As many parents these days, we thought a trip to the doctor would put him on the sidelines for an extended period of time and since he was playing soccer as well and hard as before, we let it go. Finally we asked a dear and trusted friend to take a look. He thought maybe tendonitis but suggested we saw an orthopedic just in case. Fast forward to Friday, March 13th (I will forever fear a Friday the 13th). Since Austin was on an extended Spring Break (thank you coronavirus), we scheduled Austin an appointment with an orthopedic to look at his knee. The X-rays from this appointment showed something. The doctor wasn't sure what, but it enough to order an MRI the next day. I remember looking at this picture of my child's knee, trying to see the "dark, fuzzy patch" he was seeing and hearing the doctor say "Don't get worried yet. I have seen bone cancer and this isn't what it looks like." An MRI was scheduled for the next day.
Saturday, March 14th he had his MRI. It was a completely surreal experience sending your child into a room for a machine to take another picture of his knee then going home like nothing is wrong. Was it? At this point, a crippling fear started to set into Jeff and I. By Saturday afternoon, we had heard from the doctor. The only word I heard during the entire conversation was tumor. The only way to determine if it was cancerous was a biopsy. We were told we would her from the orthopedic surgeon soon. On Monday, March 16th we heard from the doctors office. A biopsy was scheduled for Friday and a phone consult was scheduled for the next day. Austin opted out of the phone call, so Jeff and I met to get on a conference call to see what we could learn. Ultimately, we learned that his tumor may or may not be cancerous, but based upon the doctors expertise he was almost certain it was Osteosarcoma- bone cancer. It all depended upon the biopsy.
That phone call changed our lives. We have faith in God. We have each other and 4 amazing kids. We are lucky enough to have the support of our very gigantic family and many friends. But we were already living in scary times and the word cancer has so many potential outcomes. We had no idea what the future might hold. At that point, the fear and heartbreak completely took over. We started just trying to get through the minutes of each day in the hopes that we would wake up the next morning and this nightmare would be over. We were living in quarantine and couldn't reach out for support as we needed. We were living in hell. We told Austin about the biopsy. Let him know that there was a chance this was more serious than initially thought. He took the news much better than we did.
Friday, March 20th was biopsy day. Due to coronavirus, only one parent is allowed with Austin at every appointment. As Jeff is higher risk for COVID-19, that means that I have taken him to his appointments. I spent the hour in the waiting room terrified, praying to God the entire time to spare my baby and our family from having to go through this. I must have repeated the word "Faith" a million times. When the doctor come out after, he stated that the biopsy was inconclusive but he wanted to proceed forward as though it was osteosarcoma to not waste any time. The good news was the tumor was small, less than 3 inches. The next step was body/chest scans to see if the cancer had spread. He said 80% of the time nothing has spread. This became our new source of hope.
Monday, March 23rd was a day spent in fear of the phone ringing and what we were going to hear. We blindly got ourselves from morning to night and heard nothing. Tuesday, March 24th were his scans. We had to yet again enter into a hospital during this crazy coronavirus and trust and pray that we would be ok. The appointments consisting of a chest x-ray and a nuclear injection/body scan were quick. We were done by 12:30pm. By that evening, we had received the official diagnosis. Osteosarcoma in his knee BUT it hadn't spread. The tumor was contained and treatment needed to start.
Thursday, March 26th we had our consult with Austin's oncology team at U of M Children's Masonic. We learned the details of his treatment plan, met some of the doctor's and nurses, learned some preliminary info about his port and the drugs he will receive as well as the risks that come along with all of this. We also took a tour of our new "home away from home". As only one parent is allowed, Jeff participated via speaker phone. Austin had some lab work done and we were on our way home. Leaving this appointment will always stick in my mind. As I sat in the car, I started silently sobbing in the front seat. I had reached the point where it was all too much. After a few minutes, Austin simply said from the back seat "You don't need to cry mom. It's all going to be ok." I was floored. This 15-year old had just been told about losing his hair, all of the awful side effects of the drugs being used, we would need to spend time in the hospital, no soccer, etc and he was fine. How?
Austin's treatment will be 8-12 months, consisting of 2 chemo sessions, surgery to remove the tumor, then 4 more chemo sessions to finish it up. Treatment starts Wednesday, April 1st with surgery to have his port put in and 3 days of inpatient chemo. We should be home on Saturday for a short period of time. What the future holds beyond that we don't know. We are relying heavily right now on our medical team guiding us through this, technology to keep us connected and the hope that Austin tolerates treatment as well as he can and we have very few setbacks.
Austin is a pretty amazing kid. We consider ourselves beyond lucky every single day. He is no happier about this than we are, but he has chosen to find the positive in each curveball he's been thrown. Soccer is his life and he is absolutely devastated that it will be put on hold for a bit, but he is 1000% determined to be back on that field playing better than he was before as quickly as God will allow him to. And when he heard that treatment was 8-12 months, he stated he's gonna do it in 8. He is steadfast in that goal and we are going to do everything possible help him reach it.
Jeff and I cannot possibly thank everyone for the incredible amount of love and support we have already received. It does wonders for the spirit to know how many people are behind you. We have had some amazing "socially distant" visitors. I will share about some of these moments as we move along this journey. As a family we know this is going to be hard, real hard, but we are going to help Austin win this fight and get back to doing what he loves. Thank you to #AustinsArmy for being there every step of the way.
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