One goal

I know why Austin enjoys the hospital so much. He has my complete attention when we’re there. All the usual distractions are erased: laundry to fold, computer to check, big brother to care for. Nope, when we’re there, even just for our twice-weekly clinic visits, I have nothing but occasional phone-surfing to draw me away from painting, reading, playing with the little man.

This past Thursday, while Austin received a blood transfusion over three-and-a-half hours, we sat next to each other on a bed in front of an eight-foot window looking down on the construction site six floors below us. We must have sat there “in the sun” for at least an hour, gazing at the forklift and bulldozer driving back and forth across the dirt. Then he sat in my lap on a chair and reminisced about last summer at Chautauqua: “Remember when …” he’d start each sentence, recalling boat rides and fireworks and trips to the mini-amusement park down the road.

“We’ll do that again,” I kept saying over and over, already looking forward to our upcoming summer, when cancer could be well behind us. But I know that boat rides and fireworks and trips to the amusement park might not happen too quickly. We might still be in the midst of cancer when summer arrives. We are indeed halfway through the mandatory eightteen weeks of treatment. But those extra twelve weeks loom large on the horizon. The fact that Austin is doing so well, tolerating chemo and bouncing back after each dose, will probably bite us in the ass in the end. As long as his bone marrow hasn’t been totally depleted, we really have no good excuse for stopping treatment in April and will almost certainly continue through July. Ugh.

This protocol, the one designed for relapsed Wilms, actually calls for up to six rounds of the twelve-week maintenance cycle we’re currently in. As I explained a while back, few children are able to withstand the full ninety-week protocol (six 12-week maintenance cycles after one 12-week induction cycle and one 6-week consolidation cycle) because their bone marrow is so completely destroyed. When we signed on for this treatment plan, we committed to at least one of these six-week cycles and two if Austin was able.

And, of course, as of now at least, he is able. So strong, little Austin, too strong. If he breezes through the next three doses as he has through the past three, we will definitely be in for the long haul. There’s a part of me that hopes he isn’t strong enough just so we can be done. But, as his oncologist has reminded me too many times, our ultimate goal is not an easy few months or a fun summer but survival.

Survival. There’s just no arguing with that.