“You’re welcome to play in here until the nurse comes to get you.” The woman from the front desk wore a big smile and her eyes were understanding as we stood overwhelmed on that first day.
Radiation. The decisions had been irrevocably made. Chase needed further intervention to survive, and so we stood in this place and prayed against all odds and all side effects that it would work and work well. Oh, but my heart still hurt. Because some decisions still hurt even when you know they’re right just because they’re so crazy big.
It’s a good thing God knows all the things that I do not.
The play room was a small rectangular space with a fancy plastic kitchen set on one wall, a crafting center and school area against another, several shelves filled with toys, books, and games, and on the last wall was an entertainment center with a TV and several gaming systems – all of which Chase wanted to play and none of which he knew how.
But my interest was immediately drawn higher to the top of the center, where several poster boards and papers were propped. They were mostly thank you cards covered in children’s handwriting and colorful pictures, each one expressing heart-wrenching messages of thanks for life-saving treatments. But there was one piece in particular that held my attention.
It was a large, bright poster display with row after row of pictures. In each one was a beautiful little boy with dark eyes and a magnetic smile. In most of the pictures, he was accompanied by an equally beautiful woman whose perfect smile and weary eyes spoke volumes of cancer motherhood. I knew that look. In other pictures, there were people who appeared to be family members and sometimes even medical staff. The one constant other than the small boy in the center of each, was what they were doing. For, in every single picture, they held up hands and fingers (however many it took on the given day) in a gesture of marking time: day 1, day 10, day 22, etc… On that one bright board, they had wonderfully documented and counted each day of his treatment in the center.
And then as my white and weary Chase busied himself with trucks on the plush carpet at my feet, I studied the progression of the days and treatments – from the beginning with hopeful smiles and lots of hair to the end with joy, weariness, and what looked like lots of burns and bald.
And with the pictures was one strong thought that crossed my mind: “If this is as bad as it gets – we can do it too.”
So I held the image of the beautiful boy and his mama in my heart and every day as we went back for another treatment, and Chase grew increasingly weak, I’d quietly look to the corresponding day on the poster board and then look at Chase and remind myself that we could keep going because they’d survived too.
I now know that the boy’s name is Isaac and his life changed with a headache when Chase was only a one-year-old playing in the backyard. Isaac would finish his road through radiation a little over a year before Chase ever started. And as Chase’s 2015 ambassador year came to a close, we learned that Isaac would number among the new five who stood for 2016.
The label on Chase’s chart reads Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumor, and Isaac’s reads Medulloblastoma, and they have yet to meet face-to-face, but most days, I just marvel at how their lives have intertwined and mirrored and how Isaac’s story has encouraged us so much.
And isn’t this why we share our stories – even the hard ones? So that someone, somewhere, can remind their own heart “If they did this, then so can I.” As we share our experiences with each other and seek to encourage each other, we pass a baton. I have run and now it’s your turn. I cannot run with you, but I will stand and cheer you on because I know the course you’re taking.
Yes! This. I know I say it all the time, but I don’t think we can ever hear it enough: There is beauty and wonder in our broken, interwoven lives and even cancer can be used for far greater, far better purposes as we run.
Moment by moment.
![April and Isaac in the play room - Day #23 [photo credit: April Adamo Schippers]](https://i0.wp.com/www.chaseawaycancer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/12115627_10207303122992704_468185666555167580_n.jpg)
[photo credit: April Adamo Schippers]
Tomorrow, Brave Isaac will shave his head for kids with cancer. For more on this great event, click here.
Isaac and his mom, April have taken their own experience and turned it into a great gift for others! Today, you can visit Camp Out From Cancer – their organization that provides care packages to kids with cancer (Including a tent! Our family was thrilled!)
And as always, for more on Isaac, the other 2016 ambassadors and the amazing work done by St. Baldrick’s, click here.
![Meeting Jonathan Toews. Note the basketball in hand. :) [photo courtesy of the Chicago Blackhawks Facebook page]](https://i0.wp.com/efamily.brevis.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Toews.jpg)
