Through the first few weeks of all of this, one of the things I find the most irritating are these weird little touches that hospitals put on everything.
There’s a really cool train on the 7th floor of the children’s tower. They have art rooms and encouraging messages on the walls.
Isn’t “YOU GOT THIS!!!” kind of a reminder of “You got THIS.“
I know (from firsthand experience of being a kid and from raising five kids) that kids see and understand and feel and hear a lot more than adults want to give them credit for.
Owen has cancer. He knows he has cancer. He knows how bad it can and will be. Do the happy bears and smiling clipart families help him feel better about having cancer?
Maybe I should ask him. But I doubt it.
I think that these are the things that OTHER people do to make themselves feel that they’re accomplishing something.
I don’t know that they are.
I look at the walls with happy horses and people picking corn and it makes me angrier that I’m sat there, with my son and his cancer, far away from happy horses and picking corn and putting up stickers that signify how great life is.
So, my son Owen was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in his right knee.
Bone cancer.
On September 18, my wife took Owen to a walk-in clinic to check out his knee, as he’d been complaining a bit about it for a month or so. “Growing pains,” we thought. Maybe a bruise that’s being stubborn.
X-rays, and it started the avalanche of doctors and visits and consults and calls and crying and all the stuff you’d think that a thirteen year old boy was REALLY into.
I’m repurposing this blog to keep track of his cancer, his recovery and my thoughts through all of it.
In times like these, it pays to be calm and positive. Those that know me know that calmness and positivity aren’t necessarily my strong suits.
Frankly, all of this SUCKS. It’s horrible. I wouldn’t wish it on the nitwits I had previously used this website to complain about. They’re now more irrelevant than they were. Everything about THIS really, really sucks. The people, the places, the time, the lack of time. Mostly, it sucks seeing my son in pain and being stuck full of holes.
Today was the first surgery. A biopsy to confirm the diagnosis so that the treatment protocol can begin.
From what I am currently told, it will be chemo for 3 days, 3 weeks out of every month for a year.
Somewhere in there, surgery to remove the tumor and re-form the bone.
All the time in there – being at the fucking hospital.
We live in Hickory, NC and his hospital (Brenner’s Children’s Hospital) is in Winston Salem, about an hour and a half from home. We’ll be spending at least 9 days a month there – just for the chemotherapy. There will be other procedures and tests.
I’ll do my best to catalog them.
Why? Because I should and I want to. I want to have a record of my son’s fight.
Will it help anyone? I have absolutely no idea. Will I be able to keep it up? Again – not a clue.
I don’t know what the next year holds. I know it’s not going to be easy.
Stupid Stickers
Normalcy.
Through the first few weeks of all of this, one of the things I find the most irritating are these weird little touches that hospitals put on everything.
There’s a really cool train on the 7th floor of the children’s tower. They have art rooms and encouraging messages on the walls.
Isn’t “YOU GOT THIS!!!” kind of a reminder of “You got THIS.“
I know (from firsthand experience of being a kid and from raising five kids) that kids see and understand and feel and hear a lot more than adults want to give them credit for.
Owen has cancer. He knows he has cancer. He knows how bad it can and will be. Do the happy bears and smiling clipart families help him feel better about having cancer?
Maybe I should ask him. But I doubt it.
I think that these are the things that OTHER people do to make themselves feel that they’re accomplishing something.
I don’t know that they are.
I look at the walls with happy horses and people picking corn and it makes me angrier that I’m sat there, with my son and his cancer, far away from happy horses and picking corn and putting up stickers that signify how great life is.
This sucks.
Cancer sucks.
Osteosarcoma
So, my son Owen was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in his right knee.
Bone cancer.
On September 18, my wife took Owen to a walk-in clinic to check out his knee, as he’d been complaining a bit about it for a month or so. “Growing pains,” we thought. Maybe a bruise that’s being stubborn.
X-rays, and it started the avalanche of doctors and visits and consults and calls and crying and all the stuff you’d think that a thirteen year old boy was REALLY into.
I’m repurposing this blog to keep track of his cancer, his recovery and my thoughts through all of it.
In times like these, it pays to be calm and positive. Those that know me know that calmness and positivity aren’t necessarily my strong suits.
Frankly, all of this SUCKS. It’s horrible. I wouldn’t wish it on the nitwits I had previously used this website to complain about. They’re now more irrelevant than they were. Everything about THIS really, really sucks. The people, the places, the time, the lack of time. Mostly, it sucks seeing my son in pain and being stuck full of holes.
Today was the first surgery. A biopsy to confirm the diagnosis so that the treatment protocol can begin.
From what I am currently told, it will be chemo for 3 days, 3 weeks out of every month for a year.
Somewhere in there, surgery to remove the tumor and re-form the bone.
All the time in there – being at the fucking hospital.
We live in Hickory, NC and his hospital (Brenner’s Children’s Hospital) is in Winston Salem, about an hour and a half from home. We’ll be spending at least 9 days a month there – just for the chemotherapy. There will be other procedures and tests.
I’ll do my best to catalog them.
Why? Because I should and I want to. I want to have a record of my son’s fight.
Will it help anyone? I have absolutely no idea. Will I be able to keep it up? Again – not a clue.
I don’t know what the next year holds. I know it’s not going to be easy.
But I’m not easy.
Neither is Owen.