New Normal Old Normal

It was so hard at first to get Fergus' oral chemotherapy into him. Nausea plus nasty-tasting drugs do not make for a happy mix. Dexamethasone syrup made him vomit, and mostly he hated all the other syrups too. But we found an old mortar and pestle in the back of a kitchen cabinet and, with trial and error, we figured out just what drug had to be ground up and mixed with what flavor yogurt (or whatever) in order to get the stuff into him. Finally, somehow, he learned how to swallow pills--sometimes as many as 9 at a time. And as often as 3 times a day we would come to him with a handful (or a dixiecupful) of pills and a glass of water. He'd pop them into his mouth with just a glance and swallow them down.

Another day, another x milligrams of toxic chemicals.

I swear, even today I could walk up to him with a glass of water and get him to swallow anything remotely pill-shaped. Small pebbles. LEGOs. Cat food nuggets. Diamonds.

Not that I've tried any of these tricks. Or own any diamonds.

But there are times when the sheer routine of such moments--putting chemotherapy into your child, holding him still while someone sticks a needle into his chest, recording in a notebook every medication given, every bowel movement done, every variation in body temperature--can be shocking.

As Isabel's mom wrote this week:

Tonight was just the same as ever, nothing out of the ordinary. But, that’s what got me. Our “ordinary”. I stood there, washing the syringe and realized that my daughter hasn’t complained about taking the medications each and every night in over a year. She simply takes it and takes it and takes it. It’s not normal. It’s not okay. It’s not fine. It’s scary and upsetting....

So very true. After treatment ends, a different, better kind of normal starts to take over. But, I think, never completely.