We were hoping to hear back from one of the doctors at Children’s that Friday… the urine test was due to be finished by then even if they hadn’t processed the CT. Derek got a call that morning scheduling a biopsy for the following Tuesday morning. They were going to be able to do a minimally invasive needle biopsy, but she would have to be put under general anesthesia. For some reason they didn’t want to give too many details about time and pre-op instructions, so Derek kept calling back and leaving a variety of messages. The next call he got was Dr. Meany, the oncologist (yes, we see the irony of a pediatric oncologist having the last name of “Meany”). She was surprised that pre-op had already called to make the appointment, I guess she was all prepared to break the news that it would be necessary. She proceeded to have a long talk with Derek and explained that the urine test was inconclusive as the sample had dried up before it could be tested (doh!) but the CT had given them enough justification to go ahead with the biopsy. She said they still didn’t know what the mass was, but the biopsy should tell us a lot more. *gulp* we were so hoping that they would just write all of this off saying “oh it’s just a cyst” or some such… now there would be a biopsy and general anesthesia… 36 hours before we were just on our way to a regular 4 month checkup.
So as Derek was calling our parents and his sister updating them all with the news, and meanwhile I was still at work trying to focus, somehow, on code. Luckily, my current team is full of believers, and Cathy, and Linda especially were being seriously supportive. I decided to talk to Steve, who had unfortunately recently lost his wife to a long battle with cancer. I knew it would be hard, but he was the only one at work who had recent experience with biopsies and I had a few questions for him. So I asked him if he would be OK to talk about some of his experiences through his wife’s treatment process, and he agreed. When I told him what was going on he stopped and just started to pray with me. (LOVE this team!) I was hoping to find out timeframes on processing the biopsy information. His wife had 2, one that took 2 days and one that took 3 weeks. So I was hoping for the 2 days, as I am *not* a patient woman, and waiting 3 weeks to find out what was going on with my little girl would be torture.
Finally Derek got one last call – this one was from the surgeon performing the biopsy. He was clearly confused as to why he was needing to be on that phone call as he wasn’t an anesthesiologist so he didn’t know the type of anesthesia, and it was a fairly routine procedure. He *did* tell Derek though, that they were “fairly confident” that the mass *was* Neuroblastoma, and the biopsy was pretty much just there to confirm. This was a hard sentence. I was driving home when Derek told me. We spent most of that phone call not even talking – just periodic thoughts. As much as there were hints that this may be it… hearing that the doctors were pretty sure your infant has cancer will slap you in the face. Finally I was home and able to snuggle my little girl and my husband. Next we had the round of phone calls to make letting folks know. Thankfully by this point, there was already a growing number of people praying for our little girl and us, because somehow we were managing to keep functioning. One big factor is just how happy and thriving Cambria is… it’s almost impossible to look at this child and think “sick.”
Thankfully, my boss had approved for me to frontload a few of my hours so I started working weekends in order to not have to take PTO for her appointments. That weekend I worked both Saturday and Sunday, but only a total of 9 hours… it was really hard to leave her and go in, so I kept cutting it short.
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