Mindset

Sometimes it’s hard to get back into that old mindset … that old cancer mindset. I had two other, completely disease-free topics I was going to write about today, and then I doubled checked my calendar and was reminded that Austin has his 20-month scans tomorrow.

Twenty months. Now that’s a significant chunk of time in the life of this small boy, who has battled cancer two and a half times in the past four-plus years. Twenty really, really good months, of health and happiness and growth and energy and normalcy. But tomorrow we’ll go back to the hospital, after Austin makes a brief appearance for his first day back at school post-break (which should give me just enough time to run and shower). He’ll have his regular bloodwork to check kidney function, followed by a chest CT to look for possible metastasis to the lungs and then an abdominal ultrasound to look at the kidney, pelvis and liver (another favorite site for Wilms tumors when they decide to move around and, of course, the current home of that mostly unidentified “fatty tissue” we’ve been watching for the past year). Then a follow-up with his oncologist to go over the results.

The whole thing should last about four hours, with a break for picnic lunch thrown in and quite a bit of exercise moving from the sixth floor of the cancer clinic to the basement of another building and back again. If all goes well — which we certainly expect (not that our expectations mean anything in this game) — he’ll be free again until the end of April, when we have his eagerly awaited two-year scans. Those are the gold standard, although we are well aware that they will give no guarantee that his cancer will never return. Nothing will give that guarantee. But they will mean that he has reached a critical milestone and that the chances of his Wilms tumor recurring are extremely small. The two-year mark will also mean that, should his kidney fail, he can be eligible for transplant without dialysis (or without too much dialysis; sometimes the time between failure and actual transplant can take some months due to many many factors, not the least of which is identifying the actual kidney that will go into his body). But those are discussions for another time.

For now we have this to buoy us onward: A neighbor of my mother’s attended an event at the hospital recently in which the Chief of Pediatric Oncology was talking about the importance of research and how it directly impacts patient outcomes. He presented three case studies as evidence, one of them about a boy named Austin with bilateral Wilms tumor who he described as “cured.” I asked my mother several times if she was sure that was the exact word that was used and she was very, very sure. “He said ‘cured,’ Krissy. That’s the whole reason Ann stopped to tell me about it.”

Cured. Well, that’s not a word we allow ourselves to use too often. Never, in fact, have I referred to Austin as “cured.” But after tomorrow, and after April, maybe we’ll just have to change our vocabulary. And our mindset.