One Year Later

One year ago today, on May 25, 2010, Dr. Barnhardt told me Ray had cancer.
It was 7 o'clock in the morning.
Ray and I had been up all night in the ER because Ray had been throwing up and was in severe pain. The Riverton hospital ER did an X-ray and saw enlarged bowels.
So they had him drink the contrast over an hour and then did a CT scan at about 4 am.
At 5:30 am the ER doctor came into the room and very calmly explained that Ray indeed had a large blockage and that I should drive immediately to Primary Children's Medical Center to have them look at it.
I will always be grateful to that doctor.
He knew when he saw the scan that Ray had cancer.
Rather than telling me the news himself and then sending me off in my car to drive up to the hospital, he just told me it was a "blockage" and said, "Don't go home. Don't stop anywhere, go directly to the ER and they will be waiting for you."

Oddly, the drive there was peaceful.
The morning was very still and the sun wasn't up yet, but was casting cold blue light across the sky.
The roads were virtually empty and Ray slept quietly in the seat next to me as we drove.
Once we got to the ER, they had a room ready for us, but the nurses kept saying, "Dr. Barnhardt will talk to you." They told me that Dr. Barnhardt was a surgeon, so the whole time I was feeling so sad for Ray that he had kinked intestines or a blockage or something and that he may need surgery.
Around 7 am Dr. Barnhardt came in, examined Ray, turned the computer screen to me, so Ray couldn't see it, and pulled up the scan on the computer.
He showed me Rays heart, kidneys, etc, and then suddenly there was this huge black circle.
I said, "What is that?"
He said, "It's a tumor."
My heart started racing and I'll never forget I said, "Is it...(and I looked at Ray who was looking at me and I couldn't say the word, so I said)...is it the worst case scenario?"
Dr. Barnhardt said, "Yes."

The strange thing to me now, as I look back is that I never EVER imagined my child would have cancer. I always assume the worst for myself and for other adults when they are sick, but even throughout Ray's pain, the X-rays, the news that he had a blockage...I never once even had the thought that he could have cancer.
I mean....kids don't get cancer...right?

It was a huge shock. The next few days were very scary and as I think about them I can still feel the shock and fear and sadness that we experienced.
Ray went from being a normal 6 yr old boy with a stomach ache, to 10 hours later, lying in a bed in the cancer unit.
Dr. Barnhardt did the surgery on the evening of May 25th and took out a grapefruit size tumor, leaving many smaller ones. They told us it was unique to get a lymphoma tumor that big, and that pathology would be happy to study it because usually they just treat lymphoma with chemo and don't remove the tumors.
But since Ray's were so big, one of them got enmeshed with his intestines.
In fact, the tumors were growing so fast, they told us that if we had waited even a week to bring him in, he could have died.

How do you even process news like that about your child?

I have so much more in my heart about this, but for now all I will say is this...Ray survived.
He fought cancer and won and is doing great. It was a bad year, but now, he is going to be alright. It challenged us all and we had so much help from so many people. I will always be so grateful to our families and neighbors and friends who took care of our other children, our meals, our home, our bills, our sanity...everything else in our lives, so we could be with Ray in the hospital.

I am grateful for Ray. He did it. He is a great boy and I am so lucky to be his mother.
He lived. And I love him.


This was the day Ray lost his hair.

Did having cancer affect Ray?
Well, he doesn't talk too much about it, but this is a picture of the wall above Ray's bed today. He hung these up himself without telling me (or asking me I might add).
The bell on the left is the Make-a-Wish bell he got at Christmas time that says that every time it rings a prayer is sent to heaven that his cancer would be cured.
The middle one is a native American necklace that my sister Jojo and her son gave Ray. It is supposed to give you strength and courage when you wear it.
And the medal is the Ragnar Relay medal from my friend Somer, who organized her Ragnar team to be called Team Kitchy, in honor of Ray, and they ran to raise money for Ray. She ran a great race and finished, then gave her medal to Ray to encourage him to finish his race.
These are the things my 7 yr old boy has on his wall.

So yes, I think the past year has affected Ray in ways both big and small.
A few weeks ago I asked Ray what he may have learned from having cancer, he thought for a moment and then said, "To be brave."