The Big Five

Five years ago today, our two-year-old rang the bell in radiation therapy on his final cancer treatment. Yesterday was MRI day, and Teague is still clean.

The Big Five. The milestone we put all our stock into. The one that means freedom or a cancer-free future or something like that. I could hardly imagine it when this all started. I had a toddler, still in diapers, not even speaking in complete sentences yet, who had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

And then he had surgery and a 10-day stay in the hospital, and they told us they wouldn't need to treat him any further, and then a few weeks later they changed their minds and placed a central line for sedation and gave him 33 radiation treatments and he lost half his hair.

My head kept spinning for a few months after that. I couldn't think past his next MRI, much less five years down the road. He'll be seven before we get there, I thought, and it seemed far away and unattainable.

Then we did get there, and strangely, it wasn't all that magic. This amazing milestone didn't make it feel like all of that hadn't happened.

The reality: Teague's cancer will never be long enough ago for me.

In practice, I hardly think about it day to day. Actually that's not true. I do; I just don't live in fear. I'll see the scar up the back of Teague's head or his old radiation mask (still not sure why we kept that creepy thing) or the little scar on his chest where a tube used to be, and I'll remember and feel gratitude to my Father in Heaven and pride for how heroic and amazing Teague is. He won.

It's sobering to be raising a kid who has clearly been rescued. He has a great work to do with the gifts he's been given; his potential is far greater than mine.

That kid has taught me more about life and God than I could have ever found out with such certainty on my own. I can never, ever deny the divine role and mission of Jesus Christ without flat-out lying. I know He lives.

There are still hard days. Sometimes when we go back for scans, it hits me that even though we know we are fine, we are in that place on that day because Teague once had cancer in his brain that very well could have killed him. We are making sure it's not back.

And sometimes it strikes me, even though yesterday was the fifty-second time by my count that Teague has been sedated (and I've watched it nearly every time), how eerily lifeless he looks as the color drains from his face and he slips into some unconscious place. It slaps me with the reality of why we have to do it to him.

So yesterday I cried. More than 50 sedates later, and I still cried.

Teague's oncologist seemed to be kind of amazed by him. She said that with what he's been through, she would expect to be seeing more effects. All she found was that when he follows her finger with his eyes and gets as far as he can go to the right, there's a little movement.

It's common for kids who have been radiated in the back of the head to have eyes that skip all the way across. The cerebellum is not only for balance (Teague's balance is normal), but it's also responsible for the way the muscles work together. When you bend your arm, for example, the triceps relax as the biceps contract. If the cerebellum is damaged, the triceps won't get the signal to relax until the biceps pull, so the movement is jerky. And all Teague got was a little tremor in his eye when he looks all the way to one side.

They've also found some hearing changes in the last year. Overall, his hearing is fine, but there's one pitch on each ear that's now pushed over the border of normal range. Nothing he should notice, but something they'll keep an eye on because it is a change.

All his blood work was good. Normal organ function on everything: liver, kidneys, thyroid, all of it.

So I cried again at the end of the day. Not because we have to go back once a year for a few more years. I can accept that the cancer experience will always be with us and that once in a while, we will have to go to a place where it might feel a little too real. I can do that.

Mostly I am overcome with gratitude to God and relief for all that's good. Five years later is actually a pretty good place to be.