TWO FOR TEA
By Jody Bresch
Two Cancer Survivor Stories
Phillipians 4-13
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Life can bring unexpected challenges, and some bring us to our knees. In the summer of 2005, our son, Hunter was 3 years old. Because Mike and I were both teachers, we kept asking each other what was going on with him? His developmental delays were dramatic even though he could walk and run, and he had a limited vocabulary. However, he walked with a significant lean to the left. He would take two or three steps forward, seem to lose his balance, then stumble and fall. This was an everyday occurrence, all day long. He still wasn’t potty-trained, and while he seemed intelligent enough, he struggled to express himself.
Because, on the surface, he looked like every normal, healthy, three-year old, it was difficult for other people outside of the family to see it. However, our pediatrician, Dr. Heitsman finally did some intensive searching for answers. We spent the major part of a day going through full body x-rays, numerous blood tests, and a cat scan. By 5:00 P.M. Dr. Heitsman called me and said, “I know what’s wrong with Hunter. He has hydrocephalus.”
To begin with, Dr. Jay scheduled an appointment with a pediatric neurologist at University of Iowa Hospitals that we were to see in about three weeks. However, in the next week, Hunter seemed to dramatically get worse. He spent the first forty-five minutes to an hour every morning, falling and stumbling like a falling down drunk. He had shakes and tremors. He sometimes threw up his first meal of the day. I called Dr. Jay on a Thursday morning to tell him what was going on. He said, “Give me a few minutes.”
He called me back shortly, and said, “I’ve arranged an appointment for tomorrow with a neurosurgeon in Iowa City, Dr. Albert Menezes.” Dr. Jay said, “If I had what Hunter has, this is the man I would choose to take care of me.” Dr. Jay had to have pulled a few strings and called in some favors because it can take up to six months to get an appointment with this neurosurgeon, he is so world famous, like the ‘rock star’ of doctors in the world of neurosurgery.
Dr. Menezes had us scheduled for surgery for the next Thursday. The surgery, itself, went outstandingly well. After Hunter’s surgery was over, Dr. Menezes told us, “Hunter has been going through life like a falling down drunk, and when he wakes up, he’s going to have his first clear-headed view of the world, and along with it, a world class hang-over.”
Hunter literally had to learn to walk all over again. He started occupational therapy, speech therapy, and physical therapy. We thought he was on the way to a full recovery. Then a bizarre thing happened. I had taken him in for a pediatrics follow-up at the Ottumwa Clinic. The pediatrician I saw that day found a sentence in a radiology report from University of Iowa. “Hunter has a techtal glioma.” I knew what a glioma was. My husband’s nephew had one.
I said, “But Dr. Menezes said Hunter didn’t have a brain tumor. It was hydrocephalus.”
Well, I was wrong, and Dr. Menezes was wrong. A cat scan following the surgery, clearly showed that what had caused his hydrocephalus, a techtal glioma about the size of a walnut at the top of his brain stem. His brain had been so flooded with cerebral fluid before the surgery, there was no way to see it.
Dr. Menezes called us back to UNI Hospitals. “Well, Mom, I had to see it for myself. When I looked at the MRI, there it was. You’re not going to fall apart on me here now, are you?”
I was stunned. There it was on the computer screen, clear as day, and it was in my baby’s head. “Well, take it out,” I said.
“We can’t take it out,” Dr. Menezes told me. “Hunter would have no quality of life left. He would be a little body left on life support.”
“Then what about radiation, chemo?” I continued.
“We don’t use chemo or radiation on a three-year old brain if we don’t have to,” he told me. “We’re not going to do anything but watch it until we figure out what the tumor is doing,” he replied.
“How are we going to do that?” I wanted to know.
“By follow-up MRIs and cat scans. We’ll track it until we figure out if it’s growing or not, and at what rate it’s reproducing.”
I was shell-shocked. On the way home, Hunter fell asleep, and I may have railed at God for a little bit. I’m not really sure. Finally, I asked God how I was going to do this? Because I really wanted to cry until I had no more tears, and I was thinking, Hunter deserves better than that. This can’t be about me. It has to be about him.
Suddenly, I remembered a conversation I had had with Haydn, an older member of my church congregation, when he had a return of his brain tumor. I asked him, “Haydn, all these people love you so much. When they are saying thing to you, like ‘I’m so sorry about your cancer’, how do you keep your chin up and that smile on your face?”
He said, “Because I tell them ‘I’m not dieing with cancer. I’m living with cancer.”
Well Haydn and the good Lord had just thrown me a rope to hold onto. I didn’t dare get up every day, caving into the stark raving terror that Hunter was dieing of cancer. Hunter deserved better than that. I could get up every day, and say, Hunter’s living with cancer, and we’re going to find something to celebrate about life and living it today’.
That afternoon, I made a pot of tea. Hunter and I sat down at the dining-room table with two cups of tea, his half full of lactose free milk, both cups with a dollop of French Vanilla Coffee-Mate in them, and a packet of Splenda. The table was set with bright pretty placemats and my best silverware. I told him we were having an afternoon ‘Mother and Son’ tea. We sipped our tea and we nibbled on pieces of toast with jam and I tried to explain to a three-year old what all of this meant. That met with moderate success at best, but the afternoon tea party was a huge hit.
We had afternoon tea every afternoon from then on, and often still do it to this day. It’s a time for both of us to decompress and remember all the things we have to be grateful for.
Hunter began radiation treatment in February of 2007 when he was four and a half years old. He had 28 treatments, 5 days a week. We came home in a snowstorm on a Wednesday, the end of March. By May we knew his tumor had been damaged by the radiation and was not reproducing. It had already measurably shrunk. It has continued to show some shrinkage at every follow-up MRI since, until it’s now pretty much stable.
When Hunter was at Univeristy of Hospitals for that six weeks and for months afterwards, we received cards and letters from good people all over South Central Iowa. They said things like, “You don’t know us, but we know about Hunter, and we want you to know Hunter is in our thoughts and prayers.” It was humbling and it was gratifying. Many heartfelt thanks to all the prayer warriors who kept us in your thoughts and prayers through this rough stretch.
Thanks to a remarkable team of educators from Area Education Agency 15, the McCarroll Pre-School, and the Agassiz Elementary School, Hunter reads, writes, does arithmetic. Hunter is mainstreamed in a fourth grade classroom with his peers much of the day, and he loves school.