The Last Goodbye

The fascinating thing about that last day of chemo a year (and two days) ago was that we didn’t know it was our last.

I remember the day pretty well and I mentioned it in this post. You can see that I never said anything that sounded triumphant or victorious, I never used the words “relief” or “finally,” there was no mention of celebration. We finished on time that particular day (and celebrated that small victory), kindly waved to the nurses as they buzzed us out the door, and shouted out a cheery, “See you soon!”

But we didn’t see them soon. Austin spent the next few weeks in the outpatient clinic receiving platelets and blood transfusions, while Mark and I spent the next few weeks researching obscure medical journals, weighing our pros and cons (with the cons always heavily outweighing the pros) and trying trying trying to settle on the right choice.

The right choice eventually found us, thanks to some timely emails from prominent Wilms tumor doctors across the country, and chemo was over without us ever having celebrated that last day. There was no victory lap around the oncology hall, no clapping and cheering from the beloved nurses as Austin completed his final round. It was instead an ordinary day. We walked out of those hospital doors and, unknowingly, began our ordinary life again.

There’s a victory lap in that.