The Ugly Truth

I apologize in advance if this one is disturbing for you, but I feel it’s a necessary part of our full story. On Austin’s birthday last week, Mark and I took a moment to look through the photo album that contained images from his first birthday, and to reflect for a minute on just how far we’ve come. As we flipped through a few months’ worth of photos, I realized that those of you who started reading after I launched this blog, but never read the CarePage, missed out on some of the most serious days — and most disturbing images — of his and our lives.

So, here they are, in all their gory (“L” purposefully omitted).

This first one was taken the morning of August 1, 2007, our third day in the hospital. You can see that his belly is a bit distended, but not alarmingly so. This was the last moment his skin was unmarked by scars, as he was preparing to go into his surgical biopsy which left him with two inch-long incisions on either side of his abdomen and a Broviac line in his chest:

Sleeping post-surgery with his mama. It was now confirmed that he did indeed have cancer:

And with Caryl. You can almost see one of the scars under his hand:

And with his Gram. Poor sad baby, he wasn’t even drinking that jukebox, he just held on to it like a lifeline:

But after eleven days, we went home and he started to get back to normal. The Broviac line under his shirt is what causes all that lumpiness:

Still smiling:

Still playing:

And then things began to change. When he was supposed to be getting better, he instead got worse. Over Labor Day weekend, right after a blast of three chemo drugs, his belly just kept growing. Growing and growing, bigger every day. I literally tied a piece of ribbon around it and measured it on Saturday. It was one centimeter bigger on Sunday. And another on Monday. And by Tuesday, we were back in the hospital. Smiling. Somehow smiling:

The next day we learned the truth: the tumor, which at diagnosis was 7 by 7 by 14 centimeters, was now 10 by 15 by 21.

And yet he too tried to smile:

But it wasn’t easy:

And then there are these next ones. Taken on Friday, September 7, 2007, two weeks before Austin’s first birthday and mere minutes before we brought him to the pre-op room for a six-hour surgery that would remove his right kidney and a five-and-a-half pound tumor:

I know, I know. I was there. I saw these images with my own eyes. In my own child. So believe me, I know how bad they are:

And hours and hours later, he was returned to us, nearly six pounds lighter:

And so he was lighter and, we hoped, healthier:

But it was six days before we knew why it had grown so horrifically and a full ten days before he was allowed to eat again. Ten days with no milk, no food, no water, except for the few ice chips I sneaked him one day (which he promptly threw up):

He was a mere shell of the boy I once knew. But still, he tried to smile:

Those were the worst days for me. Of my entire life, I think. Well … I know.

Finally, we got to go home, for five days, where we celebrated his first birthday:

And when those five days were up, we were right back in the hospital, getting ready for another surgery. But this time, Austin’s belly was fat from all that cake. Honestly, this picture was taken five days after the one of him above in his hospital gown on the bed:

I know these are sad and I know they’re shocking. But I’m okay with looking at them. In a way, I think it’s good: we should never forget. But that was then.

And this is now: