I Don’t Know Where to Begin
September 1, 2008 by BloggerNewbie
Thank you for visiting again. I hope you are enjoying my blog.
Click here to subscribe to my RSS feed and get updates automatically.
Please come again!
I Don’t Know Where to Begin
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. 
Unfortunately, my family is aware every day of every month. I have thought about this topic for weeks now. How was I going to tell my story? My story is sad, sweet, long, and short all at the same time. This story brings a HUGE lump to my throat, makes me nauseous and makes me cry. I cry with tears of great sorrow and tears of gratitude so big my heart, body and soul can’t hold it all. I guess there is only one way to start – from the beginning.
My daughter has two children; a girl and a boy. She always proudly announces to anyone who will listen that she has a fairy tale life, and she does.
Her daughter is adorable, and as sweet as she is cute. I am really not saying that because she is my grandbaby. Emily is smarter than most adults I know. I cannot begin to describe the wisdom this child has in her little 7 years of life. Most things are just “matter of fact” with her.
Her son is a “tank” and all boy. He leaves a trail wherever he goes. I had three girls so it is a little different with a boy. No one in his life points him towards trucks and not dolls but he somehow instinctively heads towards tractors and motorcycles like they are boy toys! Drake is almost 20 months old and also very smart.
Okay, enough granny bragging. When Drake was 10 months old, our fairy tale life took a drastic, devastating (too many words to describe) turn.
My daughter called one evening to tell me she was taking Drake to the ER because “something wasn’t right”. I was eating dinner and I told her to keep me posted. She takes her kids to the doctors on a semi-monthly basis. In fact, she had taken him to the pediatrician that very day. He was having a little trouble breathing; kind of wheezing and tired a lot. I told my husband that she had called and that I just had a “strange” feeling and I was going to go to the ER also. She’s young and they may just brush her off as being over protective. But if mamma says something isn’t right, then something isn’t right.
X-rays revealed that his left lung was either full or blocked. Did he swallow something? Did he have pneumonia? Our local hospital was not equipped for pediatrics so we were transferred to a larger hospital in our neighboring state of Vermont. By now, it was in the middle of the night.
When we arrived in the ER at the Fletcher Allen Medical Center in Burlington Vermont, we were met by a team of doctors. One of the doctors was an oncologist. I thought that was weird. The kids didn’t pay too much attention. I am sure too focused on the baby. I wondered why an oncologist was coming in? They tested and tested and tested! After a few DAYS of tests and a bunch of what ifs and maybe it’s this or maybe it’s that, we were getting pretty frustrated. We wanted some answers. And again, the oncologist kept coming in, checking on us, popping in to see how we were doing. I wanted to scream and tell her to stop coming in our room. We have enough to worry about without all of the unnecessary people adding to our stress. My son-in-law mentioned something about how we were going to handle everything if it was cancer? I was angry and told him not to say that again. What was wrong with him? (If you say it out loud, it might be true).
I had to call my husband. I wish he would have come with me. I needed a hug. I really needed to cry to someone. I couldn’t cry in front of the kids. (I cry as I write this and remember that awful day). I’m the mama, I need to take care of things. I hadn’t expressed my secret fears to him. Again, I couldn’t say it out loud. So when I told him, “yeah, it’s cancer”, he almost fell over. I forgot that I was secretly and privately anguishing about the ugly word. I asked him to call our family and let them know that we would be away for a little while. We still were yet to find out what kind of ugly cancer was in my granbaby’s little body. This was going to be a long journey of the unknown.
Well we will just hold our breath until we get all the facts. My long story short isn’t working so well. I need a break and you probably do to. “Now What Do We Do?”.
Toodles – Blog Happy!
“Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has…”
~ Margaret Mead
Popularity: 18% [?]
Other posts that might interest you..
Comments
8 Responses to “I Don’t Know Where to Begin”Trackbacks
Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] I shared the beginning of our ordeal as the start of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. It is very important to share [...]
[...] experience, joy and hope are scarce when you and your family are suffering through cancer. The beginning of our story started with the shock of cancer. That happens to other people. Not our family. This [...]
[...] Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. We struggled with telling our story. It is very painful. “I Don't Know Where To Begin“, Many times we would ask ourselves – “Now What Do We Do’. We only had once [...]
[...] Childhood Cancer Awareness month and have a 4 part series of posts about Drake’s journey – I don’t know where to begin. He is on a good path right [...]
[...] I Don”t Know Where To Begin. I can only say that any and every parent’s worst nightmare happened to Danielle. Her baby, 10 months old at the time, had become seriously ill. [...]
[...] have written posts about Drake and his journey in the past under I don’t know where to begin. There is also a website set up at Caring Bridge – Drake Gratton that chronicles his story and [...]
[...] As many of you know, my grandson Drake was diagnosed with cancer when he was just 10 months old. He had been in remission for about 10 months this past January (2009) when the ugly, nasty, “c” word came back. I previously tried to explain his story as best I could but sometimes I don’t know where to begin! [...]
[...] not in the opportune place to display or vent my anger. For those of you who are not familiar Drake’s journey and are interested you can start with this [...]