The other day we had to drop Reese off early for his infusion. The nurses graciously offered to get his IV started before their 8:00 AM staff meeting, so he would be done in time for his 1:00 PM pulmonary function test. Cade and Collin, who are usually at school during this routine, were in the car. Cade was the first to pipe up after Dad walked off into the building.
Cade: Why does Dad have to go there every day? (Said in a bit of a huff because he'd rather be home eating Captain Crunch than riding around in the car at 7:45 AM.)
Mom: Well the chemotherapy medicine works better if they give him a little bit every day, instead of all at once.
Cade: Why can't he take his pills at home?
Mom: They're not pills, they're liquid medicine, remember? Every day they have to poke Daddy with a needle, and that needle is connected to a long tube, and that tube is connected to a bag of liquid that they hang up on a metal pole. All day long, it goes drip, drip, drip, down the tube and into Daddy's vein. That's how he gets his medicine.
Cade: Wow, he has to get poked every day? I wonder why they can't just put him to sleep for the whole time.
After a long-winded and logical explanation of why they can't do that, I realize, "Oh duh, Mom, that's not the point." The point is, I think, that everyone here wishes there was something they could do to make Dad not hurt so badly. Around this time in the treatment cycle, I think Reese wishes he could just sleep for a long, long time too. This weekend, everything hurts and sleep doesn't come easily.
Cade is always telling us about the things he'll invent when he grows up: computers that write out your homework for you, an elevated walkway from our house to the Timblins so you wouldn't have to look before crossing the street, and special suits so you could go down inside a volcano to see the lava firsthand. Maybe some day he will invent a way for people to sleep through their whole chemotherapy treatment. They would wake up in two months or two years and hardly remember what their bodies had been through. That would be a good thing.
(Yes, he's laying ON the dog bed here. He's finally found someone, in Sadie, that he can't outcuddle.)
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Kids are so innocent. Even as they get older.
ReplyDeleteCade, Be a scientist and invent something great like that! Or invent a one-pill medicine that cures all cancers and has no side affects! That would be super cool. You, go!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like an invention I could have used a few months ago...Hang in there best you can.
ReplyDeleteCade, you are my hero and so is your daddy - May 25th scripture -2 Tim. 2:10
ReplyDeleteThoughts: If Job could have known as he sat there in the ashes, bruising his heart on this problem of providence, that in the trouble that had come upon him he was doing what one man may do to work out the problem of the world, he might again have taken courage. Job's life is but your life and mine written in larger text...So, then, though we may not know what trials wait on any of us, we can believe that, as the days in which Job wrestled with his dark maladies are the ONLY days that make him worth remembrance. Who does not know that our most sorrowful days have been amongst our best? This is hard for us to understand right now - never the less - it is true. Hang in there guys - we can see the light at the end of the tunnel Love Mom (Nana)