“Trying to Plan a Future… While Fighting to Keep One”……
One thing pediatric cancer will teach you real quick…
There is no such thing as “the future.”
There’s no “next month we’ll…”, No “this summer we’re gonna…”, No guarantees that plans you make today will still exist tomorrow.
Everything becomes… right now…..because a fever can hit out of nowhere. Pain can show up in the middle of the night. A phone call, a lab result, one word from a doctor… and everything shifts in an instant.
So you stop planning your life in big moments…and start living it in small ones.
A fishing trip across the road. A random laugh that didn’t make sense to anyone else. A good hour… a good afternoon… a good day.
That becomes everything and then reality hits again…
Will was supposed to be on a BIG turkey hunt this weekend in Tennessee.Licenses bought… plans made… everything ready.
And now… it’s probably not happening.
He woke up this morning with a migraine-type headache, low grade fever, and body aches… the chills hit last night. We pray all this is from his immunotherapy. We’re watching his temp hourly, trying to stay ahead of a possible hospital stay. He’s on strong pain meds and resting. I told him when he wakes up we’ll see…
But the truth is… we already know.
This is the part people don’t see.
The part that weighs on him… and on us as parents.
Plans made months in advance…
People preparing food, time, effort…
And then the day comes and you have to say, “I don’t think we can make it.”
And the guilt… it’s HEAVY.
You think about everything others have done to include your family… and cancer just walks in and takes it anyway.
Friends trying to plan beach trips… block off rentals… take time off work…And you can’t even give them an answer. You try to weigh in possible news from scans on the what-ifs…..etc because what if you can’t go? What if they lose money… time… plans… all because your world shifted again?
Work… I’m three months away from retirement, and I still don’t know what to do. Are we going to still be fighting or will this be a fight already won? Will we still be in Alabama… or living in Texas for treatment?
Work wants to know about plans to better the agency and all I can feel is guilt… because I don’t know. I just want to hold onto enough time to make it to that retirement date but if treatment doesn’t go as planned and I run out of time… I may not make it and that’s another weight to carry.
Being this close to 25 years… and still unsure if I’ll get there. Then feeling guilty for even thinking about that…
instead of just focusing on the fight we’re in.
I was supposed to go to work today but instead, I dropped Charlie off at school and came right back home…because Will looked at me and said,“Can you stay in my room with me?”
He didn’t have to say he was scared. I could see it.
Cancer doesn’t just take health.It takes plans. It takes certainty. It takes the ability to say “we’ll be there” and mean it.
It takes the future… and replaces it with right now.
It’s a strange place to live…you’re grateful for the moment you’re in…while knowing how fragile it really is.
But if this journey has taught me anything…it’s that “right now” is enough.
And some days…it has to be.
Cancer steals so much.
Our kids deserve more funding for better research and better treatment plans. We have to do better for all of these children fighting.
