As a parent you worry about things You worry
does he have an earache, does he have this, is he going to get into a good college
you've never ever as a mother wake up and say
I think my kid has cancer it just never crosses your mind
The first day we went from
everything was fine at 1 o'clock in the afternoon
to diagnosed with cancer by
about 11 p.m. that night and
so it kind of shatters your whole world when I found out that I had cancer
it was really scary
like oh my god like how did this happen
why I didn't know exactly what cancer was
back then I just knew it was bad so
so it scared me a lot
And then when mom and dad told me it was a disease and you could die from it
I was really scared
Because I thought I might have been a goner but I'm not
I'm alive here right now, doing it.
When Charlie had cancer we didn't see both of our parents in the same room most of the time.
Like the way we did things were so different after that it to work
around his schedule and
see which parent was going to be home at what time. One night I came home and it was
just a I drove home in a torrential downpour, I was exhausted I
I was terrified that I wasn't gonna make it home I was so tired and the roads were
so bad
so when I came home that night I sat on the couch and they both sat right next
to me
is close to me as possible and just wouldn't let me go
My mom would be gone for a few days and our Dad would be gone for a few days and
it would just keep going back and forth like that when it was
horrible horrible it was really a painful part of our family time
because we weren't together
there were a lot of things that helped us get through we have a great
family infrastructure we have a great support network so our family and
friends
were right there at the get-go they're still there today
so that was enormously helpful
I put my faith and my trust in Charlie's doctors
the experts I had to it was all I could do I looked at those doctors and I looked at the
way they look to Charlie
and they loved him the way I loved him so I knew they weren't going to do
anything
but was going to harm him
obviously chemo is in and of itself can be harmful to the body but
it ultimately was there to heal him and that's what their number one goal was
My brothers were helpful if you felt sick
and your Mom wasn't there they would run
They would say, "All right I want you to go to the toilet but if you can't make it then we're going to run and get you a bucket
We have pink buckets under the sink. We were like the throw-up brigade
in case he was going to be sick
If I had really bad problems
they would help me out. They were
the best when mom and dad were gone yeah
We were always just kind of watching Charlie, making sure he was OK whenever we could.
but yeah
but I felt good doing it, you know, it was something I could do to help.
They've learned compassion the hard way but they are extremely compassionate
kids
they really are, they get it, they look at people in need and they get it.
They learned a lot about, you know, medical conditions
that affect your lives and how that
how that cascades into affecting other people's lives
so I think they will be a lot more thoughtful about
these kind of things when they encounter it in the future.
He had
some awful medicine that he hated and
he and Max and a little bit from me turned it into like a love song
to that medicine almost, you know, but yeah
in a sarcastic way too because it was his least favorite medicine
of all because it was like a weird yellow paste
it looked like too and they it started "Yellow" "You're yellow, you're yellow, you don't taste like Jell-O be"
Hey, hold open the door
You need your humor intact otherwise you're going to go insane.
It's tough, it's scary, it's overall
hard, but you can get through it.
And just
be calm
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whenever I think wow this was a really bad experience or this
was really awful I think of how much more awful it could have been
if things had not gone the way they had gone
if we didn't have to care we had
if we were born at a different time or in a different place
the outcome would have been, much more likely have been, much different than it
has been so we're incredibly lucky and
I don't want to take that for granted I want to build on that
share it and try to help some other people get as lucky as we are. I never
you could've offered me anything in the world I would never ever ever have taken this route
I would have given up my own life
before I took this route but we have met the most amazing people
other families going through it clinicians that we've met do I wish we
met them this way
no it but I know without a shadow of a doubt I
would not have met these people if we hadn't been forced to take this road
so I'm choosing to look at the positive and that
this is it has enriched our lives in a way that we never would have dreamed of
now that we're on the other side of it Wow
what a journey what an amazing ride
and journey this has been
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