48 Hours On The 20th Floor

“Will you stay with me?” His lower lip trembled as he tried to be brave. And then, all too fast, we are at the reinforced white of the double doors, and the doctor in his gray-blue scrubs and hair net murmuring, “It’s time”.

I kissed his head awkwardly over the side rail of the bed, wishing I could gather him close – shield him from all of this – even as I smile and the doctor takes our picture. A final brave moment.

And then the doors open and the bed wheels through them… Chase moving forward as I’m left behind. 

“Remember, there’s no smiling in the hospital,” I call stupidly just to see a tremulous smile. Even as scared as he is, he will try simply because I told him not to do it. “I love you sweet boy,” I call one last time and then the doors close as they turn the corner.

The surrender of a child is and will always be one of the most heart-wrenchingly difficult parts of this journey for me.

It takes four hours – four long hours before he’s done and I stand in another hallway, flanked by two friends as the doctor explains the anomalies of the surgeries and Chase’s body. And I want to laugh because this was a surprise to him, but very few things surprise me when it comes to my sweet boy. He’s not about the easy road though things.

The important things is that the surgery went well and that he got all the cancer out. And I tell the doctor that he deserves a gold star for powering through a thyroid surgery that lasted as long (or possibly even a smidgeon longer…) as Chase’s brain surgery. He smiles because he’s been with Chase for six years now and he knows Chase’s brain surgeon well. And later, the neurosurgeon will demand the gold star for doing a brain tumor resection in the time it takes to remove a thyroid. Doctors become strange family members this long into a fight.

I just need to see my boy now. I need to see with my own eyes that he breathes.

It felt like hours, but was probably only minutes before they call me back and as I follow the nurse, I’m whispering prayers for strength because I remember the brain surgery. Very few things make me weak in the knees, but the sight of my broken boy was one, and I remember Bob getting on the bed with Chase because I couldn’t. I couldn’t handle the stitches and scars in those first minutes and I beg for strength because Bob isn’t with me this time and I will need to find my way with Chase alone in these first minutes.

He is so broken. My sweet boy. There is a part of me that knows it is never as bad as it looks, but the part of me that birthed him and loves him absolutely detests seeing him cut and scarred – with an unholy rage. 

It will pass. It always does.

But this is what it’s like to walk this road with Chase. I ache when he hurts and cry when he breaks. I signed papers asking them to do these things because all his pain is still better than the cancer – and that’s just a messed up place to be in my parent head and mother’s heart.

He finally wakes and his first words are “Call Mimi” – his maternal grandmother. And then he lays in the bed and watches her silently on the screen, and I worry that he doesn’t want to talk even though the doctors said his vocal cords came through the surgery just fine.

And then we are finally taken to a room high on the twentieth floor and he lays perfectly still. “I get to ride on the bed, but you have to walk,” he cracks and croaks, and I know even as still as he is in his pain and brokenness, he is so relieved that the surgery is finally done.

But tears leak out of the sides of his eyes and track down his temples and onto the pillow. “I can’t laugh”, he says, and I don’t know whether he’s talking about the condition of his throat or his heart.

“You’ll be surprised”, the doctors say. “It feels like he’s going to be like this forever, and then he will suddenly just start healing.”

After the sun goes down on this forever long day, a magician knocks at the door and literally folds his tall frame in half over the bed giving Chase a magic wand and the rest of us the first, hoarse bark of a faint laugh.

Has it really only been hours since the surgery? …a day since we woke to this reality? Perhaps it’s going to be okay.

But then, his calcium levels drop – a sign that his body is in revolt over the space where his thyroid used to nestle close – and so they call for labs to be done every few hours and more medications to be added to his list. 

Isn’t calcium a glass of milk or strong nails? I think to myself even as they warn me about loss of feeling in his fingers, toes, and lips, and tell me to watch for his hands stiffening up, fingers becoming like tiny claws. I pray they’re kidding even while I know they aren’t and breathe just to get through the next lab. Because when you don’t have a port, every blood draw is a needle, and when you’re Chase, it’s two or three needles and so many tears..

He lies elevated on the hospital bed, sobbing hoarsely. “Don’t hurt me. Please stop hurting me” as the order comes through for labs every four hours instead of the six. And we will only know later that the nurse went back and begged to remain at the six hour mark after seeing his tears.

All through the night, the staff comes in and out for labs and medications, and to check his breath and heart as the small color-coded stickers on his torso and back keep setting off alarms. Calcium is so much more than a glass of milk and I will need all the coffee when the morning finally comes. 

The next day is so much better, and Chase sits up in his bed, but he falls back and sleeps within minutes and not even the hospital playroom can tempt him for long. We smile with the staff coming in and out as they pick up Chase’s Bears bear in his San Francisco 49ers sweatshirt and ask “What is happening here? This bear seems very confused.” And Chase growls and pretends to kick his nurses out of his room after he finds out that they’re two Wisconsin girls with Green Bay in their hearts.

Then it’s time for the drain to come out of the hollow in his throat, and they reconfigure his IV while he lays still and cries more. And it would be too much for me if not for Zack, a nurse on the floor who’s father is Chase’s PE teacher and his help on Chase’s arm is the reminder I need – the reminder of connection, the reminder that we aren’t ever alone and our stories cross in crazy places and times. And after the tears dry, we send a picture of Zack and Chase to the teachers in the school.

By this second night, the healing suddenly starts where we can see it. He gets up and takes some steps, walking in the hall with his ambulance nurse friend, Craig, and flirting with the nurses. His voice is quick, high, and gravel-filled, as if he’s afraid to push against the bruised feeling they say he’s experiencing. And then he tires and I push him around in the wheelchair because Chase is still Chase and likes to move even when his muscles want none of it.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be than here with you, Mom”, he whisper croaks over the sound of beeping monitors and a fussing baby. And for one glorious second, the hall of the hospital is the most perfect place on earth.

But the calcium dips again. So it’s another night on the twentieth floor and the hope that the morning brings better news. 

And it does… thank God, it does. We will be discharged today.

By the late afternoon in the fog and rain, I push his wheelchair with one arm while I carry bags and a suitcase in the other. I wish I had a moment to cry over this tiny peek into the life of Chase’s friends who live in their wheelchairs. It hurts so much more when the ramp is bumpy or the door doesn’t open. There are so many nuances I didn’t realize until now with my hands on my own son’s wheelchair moment.

But I can’t think about crying for long because it just feels so good to leave. Neither of us have slept in so long – too long – and the Chicago parking garage air is cold and dirty, but we both breathe deep. “Freedom”, Chase whispers.

And then we drive a few short blocks to pick up Bob and the other kids at the Chicago Dance Marathon and end up staying a few minutes and saying a few words and somehow, watching people dance with abandon and cheer on kids like Chase is the most perfect way to celebrate a discharge even as Bob and I catch each other’s eyes over the crowd and marvel that Chase is still on his feet.

Sunday passes and he rests long hours at home and plays with siblings the healing is remarkable. It feels so good to hear him try and laugh again even though he’s still quiet compared to his normal Chase self. And his hand keeps going to the bandage at his throat.

Monday morning brings school for the others and more labs for Chase. And we all whisper prayers for high calcium and receptive veins. “Why do they need more blood?” he cries, even though he knows the answer. It’s simply his way of voicing the desire that this not be the way it is.

“I miss you being my hospital butler, mom.” He tells me in the car as we leave. “Now I will have to do things all by myself again.” He sighs. “I liked it better when you had to do everything for me.”

It’s late afternoon when the hospital calls. Hoping it’s positive calcium news, I’m surprised to hear the voice of the otolaryngology fellow. The pathology report is back on the cancer and it was indeed the thyroid cancer they had assumed.

Expected.

And then she tells me how the cancer was also tucked into the few lymph nodes they took out.

Unexpected.

It feels like a gut punch, this news with the with the lymph nodes. Those tiny things scare me so much as they seem to function like the railway system for the entire body. What if…? My brain silently travels the railway lines of worry like cancer even though I know I shouldn’t worry if they aren’t worried. It’s only news…words…I tell my gut.

God is as much in control of Chase’s life and story as He was five minutes ago and will be five years from now.

They aren’t very worried because Chase is asymptomatic, his glands smooth and unswollen, but it’s definitely another bend in the journey’s road. At this point, there is no great surprise. Only weary grief. And not even great sadness for Chase – he is strong and brave as he always was and will be – it’s just the heart-weighing grief of living in a world where these moments exist – where little children get sick.

Any time, Jesus, any time now, my heart whispers quiet on the call.

So in the now, we wait for word from more doctors, we wait for calcium levels, we wait for hope, we wait for strength and peace. Sometimes life is a waiting room, really. And the story twists and turns are not always fun, but they’re known to God even if they aren’t known to us. And because of this, we are free to keep choosing hope.

Moment by moment.