Lulled

I could get used to this. Days that feel long and lazy like the middle of August. Barbeques and family cookouts and marshmallows roasting over the open fire. Hospital visits that happen only once a week. Reserving rooms for actual weekends away and getting pool passes that will actually be used.

Yeah, I could get used to this.

Of course, the weight of the world still sits on our shoulders, a decision looming near with consequences that could last forever. But for right now, for this long weekend, for yesterday and today and tomorrow, we are letting the kids be kids and just sitting back and enjoying it all.

Austin has recovered over the past ten days in ways we didn’t even know he needed to. Despite the fact that he’s been happy and energetic all along, he is suddenly that much more happy and energetic, bounding about with a fine fuzz of hair growing on his head. We are counting down the days until the removal of his PICC line, which will happen this Thursday after another eight-hour blood transfusion. He has plans to go swimming the very next day (if not that very day) in my parents’ pool even though I don’t yet know how long a “recovery” period the docs will insist upon.

Mark and I continue to go back and forth between keeping the kidney until it completely peters out and removing it preemptively. Well, no, Mark continues to sit squarely in the middle while I continue to thoroughly endorse one choice one day and the opposite the next. (Typical behavior for both of us.) We return over and over to “First, do no harm.” And while removing the kidney might (might) be safest in the long run, it will no doubt (no doubt) do harm.

There are so many little (and not so little) side effects that trip me up. Kidneys are necessary for growth and children on dialysis do not grow much, if at all, which I find very upsetting. I mean, we’re talking about the years between four and six — that’s some important growing time! Of course, he ought to experience some “catch up” growth in the years after transplant but that won’t make up for all of it. The sheer number of medications he would be dependent on for the rest of his life is another barrier for me. I hate the idea of pumping his body full of drugs day in and day out that will impact every aspect of his development. The anti-rejection drugs cause, among other things, early osteoporosis and brittle bone disease (come on, can you imagine Austin with brittle bone disease? He’ll spend his life in a body cast!). They cause high blood pressure too, something we’d been hoping we’d be able to fix before it took too huge a toll on his overall health. Steroids and antibiotics and human growth hormone and the list goes on and on and on.

But then we look at the other side, the other possible outcome and we think. “Sure, bring on the drugs. We’ll trade taking 42 medications each day to keep our bright boy.” We’ll trade anything, we know that; that part is not up for debate. It’s the big “What if” that we constantly debate: What if we’ve already done it? What if we’ve already rid his body of his cancer and taking that kidney out would only harm him? I mean, what did we do the last five months of chemo and radiation for if not to get rid of the cancer?

Ugh! No easy answer. But here are the things that lull me into my happy-mommy, I-love-summer mood:

My beautiful boys squealing with delight as they get pushed higher and higher in the tire swing their daddy built for them:

This one was taken a few weeks ago, hence Austin’s hat and mittens!

My sweet boys attempting to sleep out on Braedan’s back porch now that the railings have finally been installed, until they decided they were scared of “dogs and owls.” Really? Dogs and owls?