So, yesterday was pretty good. As we’ve all had to learn (the hard way), nothing in this game is ever straightforward, there are always always nuances. First, the good stuff: His kidney and liver are unchanged. The spot on the liver is still there; it’s still hard to see clearly (visible in some planes but […]
Last Tuesday, we went to the Natural History Museum and I took some photos of the boys sitting on the stone bear outside, right where we’d taken pictures last March. Check out the difference: More hair, same big smiles To see these images of my boys sitting in the exact same spot, just eight months […]
Aw shucks, thanks everyone. It was a pretty incredible story, especially the fact that I first wrote about that license plate on the CarePage a full five months after the last time I’d seen it and then it was spotted again by friends within one week(Make sure you read the comment from Linda Yonkers on […]
Last Friday I received a email from Writer’s Digest informing me that an essay I submitted in their annual writing competition had placed. Not like first place or anything, but 60th in the memoir category. Now I know 60th doesn’t sound like much but last year there were 14,000 entrants so placing at all is […]
Like I said, we’ve got no time for cancer. Everything went well yesterday. The ultrasound showed no changes to his kidney or liver. Sigh of relief for that. We are almost six months out from the end of treatment, if you can believe it. One quarter of the way there. There — that magic date […]
Another month has gone by and tomorrow Austin has yet another ultrasound. He’ll get to go to school in the morning and then we’ll head straight down for labs and tests to check on the liver and, of course, our organ of choice — the kidney. I’m assuming things will be fine but I have […]
This past Tuesday, I had another opportunity, like last year, to speak to a class of first-year med students at Case. It was part of their weekly “touchy-feely” seminar, the class that reminds them why they chose to become doctors in the first place. The biggest message (I hope) I sent was that patients are whole people. […]
Braedan handled Austin’s first bout with cancer beautifully. He made it through the entire thing unscathed, as if it was just another thing you deal with when you have a little brother. He was remarkably happy, well-adjusted and trusting. The second time? Not so much. I’ve been hesitant to write about this because I felt […]
We are indeed home. There were no additional delays yesterday, despite a worrisome IV line that required some tiresome arm positioning, but the transfusion was finished by ten past one. I woke up my sleeping boy, who roused himself long enough to scream bloody murder in my arms as said IV was finally removed, spurting […]
If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Now that the hand has (mostly) healed and the kidney is (mostly) bouncing back, we’ve allowed ourselves to fully embrace our normal lives. We’ve allowed ourselves to believe that we lead normal lives. But we don’t. When Austin had all his scans two weeks ago, his hemoglobin was […]