Wavering

Yes, you read that right. We are wavering. Not about chemo. We feel certain and confident in our decision to stop. But about the kidney.

I was wrong when I said last week that there was nothing we could do to push Austin’s chance of survival up over 50%. There is something we could do: we could get rid of the source of his cancer in the first place. Take the kidney out and put cancer behind us. There’s still a risk, of course, that it may spread somewhere else, but his cancer’s never done that. He’s been battling this disease for almost three years now and it’s always remained extremely local. While there are never any guarantees, we’d be pretty shocked if it returned somewhere else in his body.

But we wouldn’t be shocked if it returned in his kidney. Which makes us think we should just get rid of it once and for all.

Ugh, yuck, I know, pre-emptive strike. I hate the idea of it, of causing him some harm that might not be necessary, of taking away our chance at the miracle. But we have to consider this, we have to remember the ultimate goal. We’re not there yet; we haven’t completely decided. And there’s not a huge rush, we can wait a few weeks and see how we feel, watch his kidney function to see if it actually begins to bounce back, learn a little more about the ins and outs of dialysis (we’re “touring” the dialysis clinic this Friday when there are kids there). We can give him and his body and all of us a little rest, a small break that might involve a short getaway with some swimming, before moving ahead. It’s not time-specific like the chemo that had to happen within five or six weeks of the last dose.

This is not easy, as you know. I dread the very idea. But we’d be happy to take that kidney out and see nothing in it. That wouldn’t make us feel like we’d ruined something unnecessarily (which was our dilemma back in the fall); his kidney docs don’t think it’s gonna last more than a few weeks — or maybe, maybe months — anyway. And as long as there is no active cancer inside him, he could be eligible for transplant in April 2012, two years after his last chemo treatment.

So we do have some control over this situation, a scary amount of control in fact. We can make an enormous sacrifice now so we don’t have to make the ultimate sacrifice later.

In lighter news, Saturday’s sleepover was a huge success and the boys made an absurd amount of money at yesterday’s lemonade stand (thanks to the fact that next to no one requested change!). No news yet from today’s scans.

Oh, and the “B” on that hat? It stands for Braedan!