Of Red Funnels and Unexpected Gifts

He cried “Please, Mom, NO!” while they slipped the needle into his already bruised skin. The third time’s supposedly the charm and it wasn’t a great start to the treatment day.

When the labs were finally done, the pastor came in and held a small red funnel near the bed, holding it out to him as he sniffled and wiped his tears. “Chase, do you know that God will give you peace? He says not to worry, but to talk to him, and he will give us peace in our worries. In fact, he will give us so much peace that we might as well need a funnel to channel it into the daily life.” He put the red plastic into Chase’s outstretched hands – “I was trying to think of a picture of peace for you, and so I brought you a funnel. In fact, I got this one from Ace Hardware. Have you ever heard of that store? I think they might have had something to do with this very hospital unit.” He smiled and Chase giggled for the first time since entering the lead-reinforced room because Ace Hardware was a major catalyst for the new-built space he sits in and they both know it well. “I wanted you to have something in your hands to remember – so that every time you hold this funnel, you think ‘peace’.” 

Chase smiled, putting the funnel to his mouth, like a trumpet, and said “peace”. And then it was in my hands too. “Say ‘peace’, Mom.” And the funnel passed to each person around the bed, whispering the word ‘peace’ before Chase spoke up once again: “Can you put it on your side of the line, Mom.” He gestures to the red and yellow tape stretching like a caution across the papered floor. “I want to be able to keep it after today, okay?” And I nodded as we whispered ‘peace’ once more, and then gathered around his bed to pray for him and this thing that he was about to do. And no sooner was the ‘amen’ spoken before staff started entering the space. Nuclear medicine to oversee the dose, oncology to oversee the patient, doctors and witnesses because this was both a momentous and cautious thing centered around a boy in a plastic-wrapped bed and a rolling cart with a tiny, sealed vault containing a single cancer-burning pill.

At then, at 2:04, with all the people standing around him, he tipped back the cup (with his gloved hands – because the pill should not even accidentally touch his skin) swallowed it down, and blinked at the nurses and doctors around him: “Is that all there is to it?” And we laughed because his words were classic you-and-what-army Chase.

But that easy swallow wasn’t quite all. The nausea set in quickly like a chemo, just not as intense. He slowly sank into the bed, growing more quiet and restless, until sleep finally came late in the hours of the night. “Why did I need to do this?” The question was whispered across the line from his curled-up little body in the bed.

And when he sighed and turned, I walked to the line on the floor and whispered – fighting my own impulse to reach for him, comfort him – “Can I do anything for you?”

And he sighed. “Just pray for me.”

But joy has unusual ways of coming to us in the morning. And when, after the second Geiger count and consultation, they said “We’ve never – in the time I’ve been in this hospital – seen things happen this quickly” – I just smiled and said “It’s Chase.”

You see, Chase’s size (or lack thereof) – the very thing it’s hard for him to accept on most days – meant that his radioactive dose was lower, which meant that his time ‘behind the line’ ended up being shorter.

Chase was discharged from the hospital in twenty-six hours.

He is still in a soft isolation – the part where we remain six feet separated – and anything that he touches needs a little extra care, so we are not home yet, but we are not in the hospital anymore. And while we miss family and the gift of casual touch, we are hopeful that we will be back home and with family by Monday night. 

On this following Thursday [11/21], Chase will undergo a full body scan to monitor the effects of the treatment and what areas of his body “light up” with cancer. And there might yet be another treatment or surgery in his future, and there will be frequent checks and blood drawn as he recovers from this, but because of how long these tiny grams of radioactive iodine will live quietly in his body, the teams would most likely not even consider more treatment or surgery for at least a year. 

After eleven months of sitting with this second diagnosis and wondering what the next step will be, in these last weeks of 2019, it is suddenly easier to breathe. With the payment of these short days of tears and separation, a year’s time has been purchased.

And isn’t this the way of cancer and pain and life? Love and hope are the only things you can take across the line that aren’t waste, there are always parts to do on your own where the only thing that reaches you is prayer, and then – just at the moment you’ve reached your limit, there’s an unexpected joy and the clouds part to show the very thing you’ve fought just gave you an unexpected gift – because pain is never the end of our stories when Jesus writes them redeemed.

Thyroid cancer, meet radioactive iodine. We won’t miss you too much. See you – or not – in a year. 

Moment by moment. 

Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.

Philippians 4:7a