Surgery

Zac is in surgery for 3 hours to remove the tumour in his head.  Seb and I pace around the hospital and try to keep our minds occupied.  In the parents’ room on the ward we are staying, a lovely woman approaches us and asks how our little boy is doing.  She is the first parent we speak and our first experience of how having a conversation with someone going through something similar can be so powerful.  We tell her about Zac and ask after her son.  She tells us she has been caring for him on her own at the hospital for the past few months.  He has stage 4 brain cancer that has spread and has undergone multiple surgeries and will require several rounds of high dose chemo.  Through all this she seems calm and positive.  We are in awe of her; if she is getting through all this alone and still able to stop, chat and smile then we can surely find the strength too.  I still think of her and wonder how she and her son are doing.

We get the call that Zac is out of surgery.  The joy in seeing him conscious and moving about is massive and we quickly rush to his bedside.  This feeling suddenly dissipates when we see the Surgeon’s face.  “I’ve removed it all,” he tells us, “But I’ve had to be quite aggressive and remove a margin of healthy brain, I’m sorry if I’ve left him with a deficit.  I’ve never seen this type of tumour before, but I didn’t like the look of it.  We will have to wait for the histology report to find out what type of tumour it is.”  We knew then it wouldn’t be good news.  My legs buckled and I almost fainted.  On our way to the parent’s room, I let out a deep, guttural scream.  We held onto each other and cried.

Zac spent the night on PICU where he was looked after by a fantastic nurse.  Parents aren’t meant to stay overnight on PICU, but they allowed one of us of to sit by his bedside through the night.  The ward sister found a spare hospital bed on a separate ward, meaning Seb and I could take it in shifts to be with Zac while the other tried to get some sleep.  It was a rough night, but we were amazed in the morning when Zac sat up in bed and asked for some of his favourite hospital custard.  He sat there, playing with his dinosaurs, eating his snacks as the surgeon came in to check on him.  Seb and I took it in shifts to be at his bedside as he remained on PICU.  One of the doctors from the oncology team, who would go on to become Zac’s lead oncologist, came to sit with me on one occasion.  She was so kind and giving of her time.  “It’s rare, so it must be bad,” I said.  She replied, “You have to hope for the best but also prepare for the worst.”  And so, we prepared.  Allowing ourselves to think and discuss possibilities that previously my brain would not have allowed.