Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2008. Mattie was two months into treatment and it was before his first limb salvaging surgery. Frankly chemotherapy was bad enough, but what made our situation twenty times worse were all of the major limb surgeries Mattie needed. Mattie was never the same physically or psychologically after his surgeries. On this particular day in the photo, Mattie's cousins were visiting from Boston. They had a full and active day together, ending with running around the flag poles near our home. The ironic part about all of this is I can't pass those flag poles now without thinking of this moment in time.
Quote of the day: There are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. ~ Will Rogers
Peter and I went out today to do some chores. When we got home, someone was working me hard to go out for a walk. Sunny followed me up the steps and down the steps and was supervising me as I was putting my sneakers on!!!
Sunny is a velcro dog and he primarily does this with me only! Peter jokes that Sunny is my "boyfriend" and that he looks at me the same way Mattie used to look at me. Not sure about that, but one thing is for certain, where ever I am, Sunny is not far behind.
I have no idea why I thought about this today, but it dawned on me that if Mattie had only one bone tumor at diagnosis he most likely would be alive today. I have no clue, why 8 years after Mattie's death, I should be reflecting on this. I imagine that early on in Mattie's diagnosis process I thought about this fact, but back then I was probably too clueless to know the significance and the extremely poor prognosis he had with multiple primary bone tumors. I thought it was devastating knowing about the one huge tumor in his right arm but the other tumors were found by happenstance.
Mattie was given a CT scan to determine if his cancer progressed to his lungs, since that is the usual trajectory of osteosarcoma. It was during the CT scan of his lungs, that the imaging caught his left arm on the scans by accident. The scan detected no disease progression in his lungs, but instead another large tumor was found in Mattie's left arm. At that point, Mattie's whole body had to be scanned because he had a very rare form of osteosarcoma. Maybe one child every ten years around the world, develops a cancer like Mattie's. After a full body scan, we learned that Mattie had four primary tumors (one in each arm, right left, and left wrist).
The reason why I believe childhood cancer is comprised of multiple traumas, is for this very reason I am describing. I thought our world ended when we heard Mattie had one tumor in his right arm. Yet once we learned that he had four tumors, we really longed for the previous diagnosis. With each stage of Mattie's treatment process we were faced with more bad news, challenging decisions, and seeing Mattie transformed before our eyes. Yet while interacting this week with parents who also lost their children to cancer or have childhood cancer survivors, I noticed that we all sound the same! The same in the sense that the traumas are part of our lives, we reflect on them often, and time doesn't change our reality or how we think of this reality. We may function and continue to move forward, but forward doesn't mean without our child, forgetting our child, or returning back to normal!
Sunny is a velcro dog and he primarily does this with me only! Peter jokes that Sunny is my "boyfriend" and that he looks at me the same way Mattie used to look at me. Not sure about that, but one thing is for certain, where ever I am, Sunny is not far behind.
I have no idea why I thought about this today, but it dawned on me that if Mattie had only one bone tumor at diagnosis he most likely would be alive today. I have no clue, why 8 years after Mattie's death, I should be reflecting on this. I imagine that early on in Mattie's diagnosis process I thought about this fact, but back then I was probably too clueless to know the significance and the extremely poor prognosis he had with multiple primary bone tumors. I thought it was devastating knowing about the one huge tumor in his right arm but the other tumors were found by happenstance.
Mattie was given a CT scan to determine if his cancer progressed to his lungs, since that is the usual trajectory of osteosarcoma. It was during the CT scan of his lungs, that the imaging caught his left arm on the scans by accident. The scan detected no disease progression in his lungs, but instead another large tumor was found in Mattie's left arm. At that point, Mattie's whole body had to be scanned because he had a very rare form of osteosarcoma. Maybe one child every ten years around the world, develops a cancer like Mattie's. After a full body scan, we learned that Mattie had four primary tumors (one in each arm, right left, and left wrist).
The reason why I believe childhood cancer is comprised of multiple traumas, is for this very reason I am describing. I thought our world ended when we heard Mattie had one tumor in his right arm. Yet once we learned that he had four tumors, we really longed for the previous diagnosis. With each stage of Mattie's treatment process we were faced with more bad news, challenging decisions, and seeing Mattie transformed before our eyes. Yet while interacting this week with parents who also lost their children to cancer or have childhood cancer survivors, I noticed that we all sound the same! The same in the sense that the traumas are part of our lives, we reflect on them often, and time doesn't change our reality or how we think of this reality. We may function and continue to move forward, but forward doesn't mean without our child, forgetting our child, or returning back to normal!
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