The 20-Month Legend by Steve Tate

Author:Steve Tate [Tate, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2018-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

Heath, Hayes, and Reese with Savanna on Mother’s Day.

15

ONE LAST HURDLE

“We can do this,” Savanna said to me as we walked into the hospital for the final stage of Hayes’s therapy. I needed the reassurance because I was extremely apprehensive. I had heard from several parents, whose children had stem-cell transplants, that the treatment was harder on their children than I had thought. The stories terrified me. I knew there wasn’t an alternative, but still I feared for Hayes’s health and safety.

“My son got so sick,” one mother wrote in an Instagram message, “that they had to move him to the ICU four times.” This particular mom would check in on us every once in a while, via social media. Her son also had a brain tumor. Our number of social-media followers had been growing rapidly. We had an array of audiences, and only a small fraction had been directly impacted by childhood cancer. The majority had simply taken an interest in Hayes, drawn in by his angelic appearance and smile.

“Only four more weeks,” Savanna said, continuing her pep talk. “Look how far we’ve come.” We had endured five rounds of treatment. We had come far, and while I was excited to be on the last step, it was a giant step. It involved a beast of a treatment that was going to take our son to the edge of death. It was much more than what he had already been through.

During stem-cell transplants they use extremely high dosages of chemotherapy to kill off the bone marrow entirely. Then, after the bone marrow is destroyed, they perform the “stem-cell rescue,” as they often referred to it. They used the term “rescue” because that’s exactly what they were doing: rescuing the body before it shuts down completely.

The schedule was similar to our previous rounds. The only differences were the amount of chemotherapy (which would intensify his usual side effects) and one additional drug that they hadn’t used before. Its extreme toxicity would require us to give Hayes a bath every few hours because if it stayed on his body, it would burn his skin. They planned on observing his mouth sores closely and give him morphine around the clock to provide some relief until the white blood cells grew back. Some kids had been known to pass out from mouth sores, as an airway can become swollen and eventually close up.

The first week was similar to our other rounds. I would arrive for my afternoon shift, and Hayes was happy and playful. I loved taking him out of his crib, holding him on my lap, and bouncing him up and down. He loved it when I threw him up in the air. I tossed him more cautiously than I did the other babies, but he would laugh so hard. Hayes was soaking up our time together and I got the feeling that he was living each day as a gift. Although he couldn’t express his emotions with words, Hayes’s spirit let us know.

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