8. Biopsy Day

He’s in so much pain today, an intravenous drip of morphine was given but had little effect .
They prepare for surgery but as he had a bad night he is really tired, scared and very irritable.
To have to leave him at the theatre door was such a wrench, I’m so frightened but have to hold it together after all we still haven’t been told officially…maybe they’ve got it wrong….maybe Tony was right ,it was just too many cola cubes ! Now your being stupid Sharon.
David and I went for a walk whilst he was in theatre, I hoped he would be in there for a while as that would probably mean that they could take this disease out of him now.
Sadly an hour later and he was being taken to recovery, nobody needed to say anything to me I knew in my heart that this was not going to be good news.
We were told that they had found several lumps, one was attached to the liver and another was by the bowel and could not be surgically removed.
It was then that they hit us with it…they were sure that he had one of two types of cancer, one that would not respond to treatment which would mean he would only have weeks to live. Or he could have the ‘good ‘ one which responds well to treatment.
So there we had it , the dreaded word, CANCER. He was all of 15 bloody years of age, why, why why?
Only weeks to live ? No this cannot be right …he’s my baby, did I scream cry do you know I cant remember, and that saddens me because I want to remember every last detail.
What I do remember (and later feeling guilty about it) was that when the surgeon came in to see us he was carrying a little white bag , presumably the tools of his trade. But in my state of shock, I expected him to open the bag and show us the samples that they had taken!! I laugh at my stupidity now but it took quite a while before I admitted it to anyone.
I also told the surgeon that I knew this was going to happen as I had been for-warned several years ago by a clairvoyant (That’s for another day). He must have thought he had a raving lunatic on his hands.
Now we had to play the waiting game , the samples were to be taken to London for testing to see which type of cancer he had the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’. How can you have a ‘good’ cancer ? even the name itself sends shivers down your back.
He’s brought back from theatre to Ward 13 to the bed with just enough room for the little plastic chair ,he had a tube in his nose to stop him vomiting, an epidural tube in his back to numb his stomach and a line in his neck for drugs to be administered.
David drove the 125 miles back home to look after Laurrie and I stayed with Tony for what was to be one of the worst nights of my life.
He was in so much pain and I couldn’t do a thing, he kept waking and crying he was just so frightened. At one stage he asked me ‘to let him go’ I remember the screaming in my head asking the so called ‘God’ to help me.
I was quite vicious to the nurse in the middle of the night as it was obvious that the epidural was not working and after several attempts of paging a doctor I was told that he had gone home and they were waiting for him to come back. Apparently it was only him that was authorised to give the medication. After what seemed an eternity I shouted to her to give me the drug and I would administer it my f******* self! Not the way that a respectable mother should behave you might say, but to be honest I’d have done anything to be able to relieve the pain for him and the fact that all I did was scream and shout a little abuse I suppose wasn’t too bad.
Well we got through the night, both exhausted, tomorrow another waiting day.

Written by: Mum