Dear ones,
Yesterday’s routine dermatology appointment ended up being slightly less routine than what we had hoped.
Chase’s skin has some trouble spots and his dermatology team felt it would be in the best interest of everyone to send him to a plastic surgery team to talk about removing and testing.
We are still a mile down the road from an actual biopsy, and miles and miles away from a diagnosis (if there’s even one to be had) and the concerns for clean margins and all the other pieces that go along with this kind of a challenge.
But in the room and in the moment, Chase only understood the removal as surgery and the testing for abnormal cells as another cancer. And how do you put into words for the broken and burned out that yes, it might be surgery, but it’s not surgery like he’s known. And yes, they might test it and find cancer, but it’s not like any cancer he’s already known…?
The dermatologist and I both gathered around him where he sat, swaddled in a hospital gown on the exam table, trying to find a way to give him words of assurance even as eyes met over his head with the tacit understanding that there are never any promises – only the recalling and recounting what “usually” happens.
But he still drew in on himself, pulling his hands around his torso like protection, pulling away from us. And he was able to vocalize in a way 2 year old Chase with the brain cancer, and even 9 year old Chase with the thyroid cancer could not do. [and I love him for it]
“No! No more cancer! No more surgeries! NO. When I get older, I’m going to go to college and I’m going to invent a machine that will scan kids’ skin for cancer. There will be two buttons and it will either say yes, or say no…and no kids will have to have surgeries or needles just to check! I will go to college and invent this!”
He is so fierce.
And he is so broken.
And saying comfort words like “easy” or “good cancer” or “not a big deal” don’t cut it because Chase’s life hasn’t been “easy” or filled with “good cancer” or medical moments that were “not a big deal”. Chase doesn’t do easy and telling him this is going to be okay when he knows no such truth just doesn’t feel right, despite statistics.
But isn’t this how we do life with one another in grief and hard things? Sometimes, the comfort words aren’t comforting at all – not because they aren’t true, but because they don’t adequately serve the need to grieve in the moment. Sometimes, we just need people to sit next to us, grab our hand, and acknowledge that this is a bogus day full of icky garbage and it’s going to be okay again some day, but today isn’t that day. Sometimes we just need that tacit acknowledgement that life is broken and this isn’t how we hoped it would go…and that we don’t feel like we have the bandwidth to carry one more thing.
So, we’re grabbing Chase’s hands and sitting with him in this.
Choosing Hope.
… moment by moment.
“[childhood cancer survivors] have a strongly, 30-fold increased [skin cancer] risk. BCC [basal cell carcinoma] risk appears to increase with increasing skin surface area exposed. This knowledge underscores the need for awareness by survivors and their health care providers.”
–Long-Term Risk of Skin Cancer Among Childhood Cancer Survivors: A DCOG-LATER Cohort Study
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
Jeremiah 29:11 [NLT]
