Those that have been here awhile may recall a post I made back on September 29, 2013:
http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 29#p149229. It was a few days after my second son was born. His birthday was a few days earlier, September 25th, 2013. He just turned 3 last September. If I'm honest with everyone here, my wife and I were hoping for a girl for our second child. Our older son is a boy, so why not mix things up a bit? But as luck may have it, we had a boy.
As time progressed, however, I became very grateful for my second son. While both of my children are boys, they are very different. And in many ways, it's my second son that resembles me the most, both in behavior and in appearance. That doesn't really matter, I guess, but I would say that I have a special relationship with my younger son that's different than what I have with my first son. Even though they are both sons, they are both very important to me.
I'm a software engineer at Microsoft. Many of my coworkers have children, but for a long time, I've felt of myself as more of a "family person" than my coworkers. My job is important to me, but the time I have to spend with my kids is really precious. I didn't want to have kids, in fact, before having them. But once I did, they became the most important people in my life. Both my older and younger son. They're really special - even if they're pretty young (4 years old and 3 years old, respectively).
Sometime in June of 2016, my younger son (2 years old, at the time) was constipated. I was busy at work - fiscal year was almost over, and reviews were coming up. Had to finish up a project I was working on (a hybrid join operator in SQL), and when I heard the news, I wasn't too concerned. Kids get constipated. So I kept going to work, and my wife and my two sons went to the doctor. Yep, doctor said it was constipation, gave some sort of medicine. We moved on. I was still stressed at work.
About a week later, I was giving a bath to my kids, and I noticed a mark on my younger son's lower back. It looked weird. And he was still constipated. I told my wife, and she took them into the doctor again. Still constipation, said the doctor. I wasn't totally satisfied with that answer, so I took a picture and sent it into their office. No response, so we scheduled another appointment. My wife went in again, I kept going to work. Again, the doctor mentioned constipation. I was a little annoyed, so we scheduled a 4th appointment for later that week. I went with my wife and kids this time.
Again, the doctor (a different one this time), was talking about constipation. Finally, I told her to just look at the mark on my son's back. By this time, it was about the size of a softball. At that point, the doctor changed her tone: we needed to go to the emergency room.
So I sent a quick email to work, then went to the emergency room with my family. I felt some peace knowing that we'd finally get this thing taken care of. Obviously, something other than constipation was going on. Finally, the doctors could fix the problem...
But we were in the emergency room for a long time. Several doctors came in and out. Many were surprised at the size of the mark on my son's back. My little, two year old baby's back. The back of one of my best friends... A doctor came up to me, and told me that he was concerned that the mark on my son's back was a mass. Okay, I said. A mass. What does that mean?
After several hours, the doctors had an answer for my family: my two year old friend, son, and baby had cancer. A stage 4 germ cell tumor, originating in his pelvis, and spreading throughout his lungs. I learned that around June 30th of this year.
Naturally, I was devastated. This baby - this friend of mine - this funny, young kid, who had just started talking earlier in the year - had cancer. His life was on the line.
Sometime later, I recall being in a room with one of the department oncologist heads, along with a few other doctors. He seemed calm, unconcerned, and unworried. He explained about the cancer, and told me that it was quite curable. There's a 4-round chemotherapy treatment that kids go through (BEP chemotherapy, same as for testicular cancer, which is basically the same type), and after that, about 80%~90% of kids are cured. After kids get to remission, there's about a 25% chance it will come back at some time, and there are even things you can do at that stage, he told me.
Still stressful. But some relief.
The months of July, August, and September consisted of these 4 rounds of chemotherapy. It's the reason I skipped out on the US Go Congress this year. A "round" means staying in the hospital getting pretty strong medicines for 5 days. Chemotherapy has the side effect of killing your immune system, so for a couple of weeks after those 5 days of medicine, your immune system goes to zero, and you have high risk of infection.
Over the course of those 3 months, we had several ups and downs. After the first round, my son caught some sort of infection, we had to go to the ER, and they gave him antibiotics. His second round of chemotherapy was delayed. Since his tumor was so large, for the first half of that time, he had a catheter for urination. Couldn't really walk.
It was a very depressing time.
As time went on, however, things started looking up. The tumor was shrinking. He could urinate on his own, they took the catheter back. He started playing like a healthy boy again. I started to be encouraged.
Furthermore, there is a tumor marker - a protein emit by the tumor called "AFP". As chemotherapy went on, it was encouraging to see the significant decrease in this number. A normal value is below 12 ng/mL for his age. At the start of his diagnosis, he was at 156,000. It kept going down 23,400 --> 540 --> 45 --> 23 --> down to 8!
After hitting a normal level, the tumor was small enough in his pelvis to remove. The marks on his lungs were still visible in a CT scan, but were much smaller. Since his AFP was a normal level (8 < 12), doctors recommended that we stop chemotherapy.
It was a very happy time. We had made it... Until the next week. His AFP rose to 13. Then to 76. Then to 764... Then to 1040. The cancer was "back". Or maybe it was never really gone.
