The Lion (originally posted 1/31/10)

Since right after Christmas, Teddy has been pale and often complains of being tired. Of course, because of his history, we were concerned. Then he was sick the last two weekends, one of those with strep throat. His pediatrician ordered a blood draw (CBC), but for a number of reasons we went back to his pediatric hematologist-oncologist's office. This was Friday right after school and Teddy was not at all happy about having a blood draw, but his doctors thought it was a good idea to rule anything crazy out. Teddy was so scared and nervous, but then when he was younger he had to get blood draws more often and when he was a baby, everyday...so he justifiably has issues with needles! But, after a lot of fussing, tears and 30 minutes of emla cream, he didn't even notice when the needle actually went in and then after he noticed, he calmed down. He picked out a matchbox car from the doctor's toy chest and then decided he needed some Chinese food after the ordeal and we settled in to sweat out the results. Luckily, when you go to this particular office you get the results fast and his doctor told us that if anything too crazy showed up, the lab would call him that night and then he would call us. Luckily, no phone call. But then, Saturday morning as I was leaving for a meeting, Teddy said he wasn't feeling well. I called home after I arrived at the meeting and Teddy had thrown up again, this time with blood in it. Now, what had been a routine and typical experience of sweating out results, became a little panicky. I called the hematologist's office and was told that everything looked normal on his CBC. I called Sue to tell her this, to help calm her down. In the meantime, Sue brought him to his regular pediatrician's office. She said that a little blood in vomit can be normal and confirmed that his CBC results all looked normal. I wasn't much use at my meeting and was stressed the whole time. Luckily, I finished my part of the meeting early and headed for home.

Our lives can be a roller coaster sometimes and today Teddy started feeling better and it started warming up a bit, so we went to Shaw's Garden and he is still feeling good this evening.

The visit to the hematologist's office was scary, but reassuring at the same time. Here were some of the same doctors and nurses that helped save his life when he was a baby and it was a happy reunion to be sure, but on the other hand, we were there again and we always live with the fear that the old problems might come back. But, thank God, The Lion appears not to be in our house again. But, once you have a lion in the house, even if you beat it back, you are always afraid of a return visit. Driving alone to meet Sue and Teddy at the Chinese restaurant, I fought back some of my emotions and memories of how scary those old days used to be.

I never want to give the impression that we had it worse or more stressful than anyone else. If it was one thing we learned back in those early days, it was how bad it could get. One family we got to know on our frequent visits to the hematologist's office had a four year old boy. On Christmas eve in 1999, Teddy's doctor came into our room and told us to turn on Oprah. We were shocked to see that same four year old talking to Oprah about what he wanted for Christmas...a motorcyle. I saw Oprah nod in a way that I knew meant that he was going to have it, but it didn't take us long to figure out what this all meant. Another time, we were sharing a room with 9 year old boy who had just had brain cancer surgery. We heard the boy ask the doctor straight out if he was ever going to be able to play baseball again...then we saw the doctor sadly shake his head and tell him no. Another boy we shared a room with was an 11 year old with spinal and brain stem cancer. The poor boy had lost complete control of his bowels, had to wear a diaper and was totally humiliated by it. His grandmother kept apologizing to us, which we repeatedly told her was unnecessary. His grandmother kept telling us what a good boy he was and wondered why this had to happen to him. It was hard to get past all of this in the months and years after Teddy recovered. We were basically given a pardon from this hell and have been scared about going back to that world ever since. I remember one night in the summer after Teddy recovered, not being able to sleep and sitting in the dark in the living room recliner just angry and sad about those 3 boys. It didn't make sense then and it still doesn't make sense to me now.

In lighter news, Teddy is really loving Fitness Club! As you can see in the picture, he especially loves his "punch bag"! We are going to try to find him some youth sized gloves so he can punch it as much as he would like. I have been working with him to make sure that he hits it properly, so that he doesn't injure himself.