I guess we do use the C word in our house

A lot of people have asked me how Desmond is doing through all of this. Physically he has not been in much pain. His eye is a little bit itchy from the biopsy last week; I imagine it is like any other scratch we get on our bodies that sometimes itches as it heals. He hasn't had any side affects from the general anaesthesia (four times in 10 days, not that I'm counting). He hasn't complained about IV wounds hurting, although they did have to place a catheter during yesterday's procedure and he didn't have an easy time using the bathroom last night. Actually, the pain from the catheter has been the worst so far. He just cried and cried about it hurting to go to the bathroom. I imagine he will be a little bit sore after all of his procedures today: lymph node biopsy, lumbar puncture, bone marrow sample, and port placement.

Mentally he has proven to be far tougher than I expected. He has been a champ. Or perhaps the word superhero would be more appropriate! He doesn't like going to the hospital, he doesn't like being poked and prodded, and he doesn't like seeing all of the doctors. (Although now that we have a treatment plan in place has has stopped asking us if we are going to "offer him to another doctor"). But he understands that he can't eat or drink before anaesthesia, and he's not really complaining about it. We have talked to him a little bit about what is going on, but it hasn't been a serious, sit-down-and-look-grave type of conversation. We have been throwing information into normal conversation.

For example, at dinner this week I said, "Oh, Des, you know how you're going to get medicine to treat the sickness in your eye? It might make your hair fall out." Desmond took it in stride and we kind of casually told him that when that happens, we can shave his head and Daddy might shave his head, too...Des and Regan ran with that, and I'll post a picture of Jeremy's shaved head soon!

Why yes, he does wear this outfit to the hospitals!

We also did tell him that the sickness in his eye is called cancer. The social worker at MSTI suggested that we needed to use that word with him because otherwise he would hear it from somebody else, and he might feel some mistrust with us if we didn't talk to him about it first. Truthfully, he does not have the negative connotation with it that we do, so he was kind of unphased.

He seems to be moving along with life as normal, although I know that this is affecting him in ways we haven't seen yet. I figure that when treatment begins things will actually calm down a bit; we intend to keep him in his daycare one day/week, as long as his health allows, and Monday will be our regularly scheduled treatment days. At that point we will be able to work with the social worker to make sure we're addressing the emotional aspects of this, and I'm also hopeful we can make some new friends in the MSTI community that have children who have been through this, so that Des has friends who have an idea what he is going through.

Desmond's hospital backpack, filled with goodies. Thanks Uncle Josh!

I will end by saying that Desmond's spirits are certainly not broken, as he has felt good enough to flirt with and charm all of the medical staff we have seen over the last few weeks. Yesterday he started doing some side eye-rolling and his pre-op nurses laughed and laughed...so it continued through our long day yesterday and through pre-op this morning! As I write this, I am in the St. Lukes Cafeteria waiting for his port placement surgery to be over.