Promptings...

After reading through my last post a lot of feelings came back to me...and memories of what was going through my mind during that time.  Anyone who has been through something like this or is closely connected to someone who has would look at my "list" and think - cancer. But, when you haven't ever experienced cancer, it's the furthest thing from your mind...impossible. When I look back on this and kick myself thinking why didn't I listen to those promptings...that told me to take him in? I think it helps put it in perspective to recognize the weird thing is that those symptoms didn't start occuring together until about a week or two before his diagnosis. ...maybe that's why they think he probably only had it for a week or two before he was diagnosed?  If  you go back over the list and pick one single symptom, by itself, you may be able to come up with another reason or brush it off as nothing serious. When the severe acne started and they got infected, I took him to the pediatrician, they drained the "boil" and treated it, covered it and sent samples to the lab to check for MRSA or staff.  It turned out to be staff and on another time, it was strep.  I had never heard of strep in the skin before so that was weird to me.  I had this nagging feeling that I needed another opinion. I kept taking him to the doctors office and they kept reassuring me, telling me it was anything from strep throat, to dehydration, to ADHD. It just didn't sit with me though...and I couldn't sleep at night thinking about him.  I actually had visions of him dying in his sleep!  I thought I was over-reacting...what is wrong with me?.. I would think.  Am I becoming a "worry wart".  He doesn't know this, but I snuck in on him in the morning several times...just to be sure he was breathing and to be sure he would still wake up easily.  He would get mad because I had disturbed his sleep, but it still made me feel better... I just had to do it to get those ugly and rediculous thoughts out of my head.  C'mon..it was 12:30, 1:00 or even 2:30 in the afternoon and he hadn't even stirred to get up and pee! I wondered what movies he had stayed up all night watching.  He'd tell me he wasn't trying to stay up watching movies, he just couldn't fall asleep sometimes.  -Lots of teenagers sleep all day right? I just thought it was too early for that to start for him, he's only 13...just barely a teenager at all.
One day I was drying my hair in the bathroom and this thought came in to my head, "Take him to the hospital." I actually looked up or cocked my head for a second, and answered, "C'mon, do you really think he needs to go to the hospital?" I talked myself out of it.  This had happened several weeks before, maybe even a month before, when symptoms were still not clustered.  It was easy to talk myself out of going to the hospital with him, I felt I was over-reacting, but that gnawing feeling just wouldn't leave me alone. I know now looking back and feeling the spirit so strong as I do each day through this journey that it was the Lord, telling me to take him.  I know that now. It's almost as if the bleeding in his eye was just for me...to give me that last push to make sure I would listen. This was an undeniable visually frightening thing and it was the one thing I knew I had every right to "freak out" about at the hospital without being looked at as an over-reacting mother. 
Also, I have to remember that he was still actually doing really well until the very last week.  He was jumping on the trampoline, out longboarding with his buddies and going to the gym with Dad a couple  of times a week.  Just the week before, he had come home from the gym to tell me he had run the mile on the treadmill at the gym in good time!  What he didn't tell me was that he was extremely frustrated with himself because he couldn't keep up or get ahead like he always had.  He wasn't even able to keep up with his buddies longboarding.  He had to sit down on a curb to catch his breath...and that made him just plain mad!
He was actually relieved in a sense when he found out he had cancer.  It explained everything for him and he was suddenly a little proud of himself for what he could do! We found out that he was functioning on less than 1/3 of the red blood cells that a kid his age needs to be healthy...and he had run a mile on that!