It’s been almost exactly one year since our little man Wilder went into the Children’s hospital – so it seems fitting to finally talk about it. I don’t know what the right thing is – to share the story or not to. But I guess for me, writing it out and sharing it is a way of dealing with it; which I haven’t yet really done. So here is Part 1 of our story.
When life was still normal-ish
Let’s go back to when Wilder was about 8 months old. He had been eating solid food for a couple months and for the most part was doing fine, besides recurring bouts of constipation. In the beginning we didn’t think too much about it. Unfortunately constipation in babies/toddlers is pretty common; especially when they’re transitioning to solid food. I knew that and felt comfortable handling it as I had a pretty good understanding of what could help with it. The thing is, NOTHING worked. He was on a probiotic, he definitely had enough fluids, he ate a ton of fiber, plus specific constipation friendly foods (apples, pears, beans, oatmeal, oranges, bananas, flax, and prunes). None of it worked. So we went to the doctor a few times over the course of a few months and each time they asked us a few questions, pressed his tummy ever so slightly and told us to give him restore-a-lax. Like everything else we tried, it didn’t help. On top of that, we weren’t really comfortable repeatedly giving it to him because it doesn’t get to the root cause of anything. If you’re lucky and it works, it helps you poop in the short-term. It did not help at all. At this point we were at a loss for how to help him, I knew it wasn’t just regular old constipation. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was something.
And then the changes
Then out of nowhere he started randomly projectile vomiting. The first time it happened we thought maybe he had a tummy bug or something (but he had no other symptoms). Then it happened again; it didn’t make sense, he wasn’t eating nearly as much as he used to (something we told ourselves was just a phase, or he was teething, or he was constipated and his tummy hurt, or he had too much breastmilk). At the time it didn’t seem like a big issue, or necessarily issues that were interconnected. But then something changed, I don’t know how to explain it – there was nothing exactly that I can put my finger on, but he wasn’t himself anymore. Looking back, there were teeny little signs that in and of themselves didn’t signal anything, but all together told a story. In the mornings we used to pick him up out of his crib and put him on the floor and he would crawl over to Luna’s room to wake her up. He stopped doing that one day and would just sit on the floor and sometimes cry. He used to eat a ton of food, and then he slowly stopped wanting to eat and only wanted to breastfeed. At the same time, he was happy, giggling, moving around, starting to walk, playing and it felt like a huge stretch to connect these little things that were happening what felt like one at a time. This was Wilder only a week before everything changed.
So after he randomly puked a few times and we couldn’t find any other explanation for it, I made another appointment to see a doctor through our primary care network. Our regular doctor was on mat leave (which sucked because she’s amazing), so we saw someone we didn’t know.
Enough was enough
As I walked into the appointment Wilder vomited again, all over me. The doctor looked at me (covered head to toe in puke holding a crying baby) and asked me how I was doing. I wanted to scream, but instead I said “how does it look like i’m doing”? You’d think that she would have gotten the point, but nope. She preceded to tell me he probably just ate too much, and it’s totally normal and we could just give him restore-a-lax to get his bowels moving. I said NO I will NOT give him restore-a-lax again, it is not working, something else is going on. She replied saying she guessed she could give me a referral to get an X-ray to see if there was a blockage and a referral to see a pediatrician. I said fine, took both and left. I made the appointment for an x-ray the next afternoon. That morning he seemed ok again, so we took him to daycare. Before we could even make it to the X-ray he puked again at daycare and just wasn’t himself. I picked him up and his belly seemed swollen (more so than the times he was constipated) and he just wasn’t the Wilder I know
Words you never want to hear
Unable to listen to anyone tell me to give him fucking restore-a-lax again, I called Clint and told him I was taking him to the Children’s hospital. I didn’t know what else to do and no one was helping. On July 28th just a few weeks after his first birthday, we were admitted to the Children’s hospital. That afternoon I watched as they put his sweet body into an x-ray machine (which was horrible to watch) and then an ultrasound. That would be just the beginning of what felt like a thousands things his poor little body had to go through. I knew in the ultrasound that something was wrong by the sheer number of pictures the technician took; but I didn’t know what. I wasn’t even looking at the screen, I was looking at Wilder, holding him and comforting him.
About an hour or so after the doctor that had checked Wilder out came in the room with another doctor. I heard someone ask if social work had been called and I felt my heart sink into the pit of my stomach. I had no idea what was happening, but I knew it wasn’t good. In moments, I was told that my one year old son had cancer.
The day life changed forever
The room filled with people, doctors, a surgeon, an oncologist, a social worker and none of it felt real. I remember hearing the words cancer and we need to figure out which one of these three types it is. The doctor told me it was rare and he had never seen it before, so he had wanted to do some research before he came back to speak to me. Then I was told that we wouldn’t be leaving the hospital and could someone bring us what we needed. I called Clint and explained what I knew to him (which wasn’t much). My niece and my Dad, Stepmom and cousin were visiting at the time so my Dad drove a bag up to the hospital so Clint could stay with Luna. Wilder and I were taken to the Oncology Unit to settle in for what would become the next few weeks of our lives.
Kristen xo
