It's a marker day tomorrow - Nov. 11

It’s a marker day tomorrow.   I remember sitting with Asa on Feb. 11, Allen’s birthday, trying to celebrate and choke down cake when I had just heard the word “oncology” used in a sentence regarding my flesh and blood.  It’s odd.  Allen turned 15.  Fifteen years ago to that birthday date, a friend gave birth to another little boy within hours of Allen and about a year later, their son was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  And there we were, running full circle in their shoes, wrestling with the words no parent ever wants to hear.

But it’s marker day, full circle day, what do you take away from it all day.  Asa’s port a cath comes out bright and early in the morn.  And at that point, we really sail into “normal.”  275 days.  9 months from the day Asa entered Texas Children’s Hospital.  I’m really not sure what the term for this place in cancer time, this good place in a temporal world, should be.  I hate “remission.” Another cancer mom used it recently and I cringed.  Remission? It leaves a niggling question in the back of the mind.  Not the finality I’d like, but perhaps finality is just delusional this side of eternity.  We don’t really own even our words.  I’m not even sure about the word “normal,” either.  But I do know that we are trading up, fully up to the world of no wires, tubes, extraneous devices, weekly meds.  We soon trade “clinic” and “follow up” for a new place for “long term survivors” and we can actually now talk to someone called a local pediatrician. 

So, with Asa, we circle around and do a little happy dance.  We trade our prayers from “pleases” to “thank you’s.”  Someone pointed out this week that Asa might really get to use a hairbrush.  A radical thought.

As always, we would appreciate your prayers.  We are venturing to the med center briefly.  We are dealing with our old familiar friend, anesthesia, and a surgeon.  And, we get to get up at dawn and deal briefly with a very grumpy and extremely hungry toddler.  Prayers for sanity always appreciated.  Prayers that Asa would sleep solidly.

Today I started with thanks, thanks that it is full circle, thanks that maybe, just probably, most likely, we can call this deal done.  Thanks that hair and toddler jabberings are now the norm, not a lingering wait for norm.  Thanks that dancing in circles to Curious George is daily and that Asa can hear that music and hear it well.  Thanks that board books on the lap is an almost hourly request, that the recital of “Goodnight Moon” and all that the junk food that the caterpillar ate are fun times, not entertainment of a sick child.  And, big thanks, for you, for praying, for walking us still through this journey of recovering from the long recovery, being patient when as a family, we’re well, but figuring out what the other side of God being Healer really looks like.