ROCKSTAR RONAN

Ronan. Normal will never be my life again. Quinn woke up this morning. Throwing up. Headache. I look at your daddy. He knows what I am thinking. I send him a text later in the day. “Quinn is still not feeling well. I’m sick to my stomach over this.”  Of course it’s because he has a brain tumor or something. It cannot just be he has a little bug. Your daddy tells me to get him into our Doctor tomorrow. To call the Barrows neurologist that we took him to about 6 months ago for this very same thing. A normal flu will never be my thought process again. My stomach will now always drop over the little sign, symptom, or clue. I will always panic on the inside while remaining calm on the outside as I don’t want to scare your brother. That brother of yours with the worry brain the size of china. That brother of yours who now asks if I am going to die over something like a sinus infection. That brother of yours who looks so much like you, but with grey eyes and darker features. That brother of yours who misses you so much that it brings tears to my eyes when I watch him and the way he is trying to find his way, without you. We are all so broken. Sometimes we do things like all sleep in our room because we don’t want to be apart. So, Quinn sleeps in between your daddy and I, and Liam is happy as a clam on the floor. We did this last night. We do this a lot. We spent so much time apart that it’s almost as if we don’t know how to come back together. Nights like last night make everyone feel a little safer I guess. It still does not make things better. I am still always sad to wake up and not find you here, with us. That will never change.

I went inferno hiking today. 111 degrees it was. I don’t care. I didn’t notice the heat. I took my little friend, Kassie with me. My inferno hiking partner in crime. She’s slightly addicted and I think I might be the one to blame. She is always hiking without me while I am away. It was nice to have her with me today. Sometimes the company is nice as my thoughts like the break from the beating myself up over and over again. After our hike, I came home and took care of Quinn. I also tackled the mounds of laundry and chores that needed to be done around the house. I have a list of about 100 things that I need to do foundation wise and I knew that I would not be able to start them, until the chaos that had invaded our house due to being gone, was handled. Mission complete. I can start on your things tomorrow as my head feels a little more clear and after I take Quinn to the doctor.

Am I being paranoid? Probably. Do I have the luxury of not being anymore? No way. Do I wish I did. Of course. But it will never be this way again. I have your Macy flying in on Tuesday. She will stay with us for about a week. She knows how hard the holidays are for us. She is so good about coming to the rescue when we need her most. We are going to Foster the People on Friday night which I am so excited about. Assuming everything is alright with Quinn. He asked me if he could still go to basketball camp tomorrow. I told him no. I have not told him yet that we will be going to the doctor. Fun stuff. I may need to end this post tonight now. It’s been a long day and I am tired. I wanted to leave you all with something that another Neuroblastoma dad I know wrote. He has a son, Will, who Dr. Sholler has treated for a long time. Will is doing great and is basically living with this disease, all thanks to Dr. Sholler. Please check out his page if you get a second.

http://www.willlacey.com/2012/06/oblivious.html

This is from Will’s dad, below. It makes me sad, frustrated, and confused. Why don’t more people care about these kids? Why is the funding for these kids so broken and overlooked? Who the fuck is in charge because they are doing a shitty job. Is anyone in charge? I pay taxes. A lot of them. I would much rather pay for these kids to have better chances then for some stupid war that is solving nothing. You are telling me we can waste money, to put a man on the fucking moon when thousands of kids are dying every year from the number one disease killer in America. WTF is going on? This happened to me. This can happen to anyone. When are we, as a country, going to stop looking the other way? When it happens to us? Not acceptable. If somebody would have dealt with this, like it need to be dealt with, my Ronan may still be here. The fact that I have to live without him because kids don’t get cancer, therefore, they don’t get the funding for research is the biggest crock of shit I have ever heard in my life. I’m stopping now. I’ll let Will’s dad, take it from here.

Despite what you may think from following along here on this website I do not – in fact – share everything about our life or our family.  There are challenges we face and obstacles to overcome that do not have a home here.  What I do share is about parenting a child with cancer and the extraordinary number of challenges that prevent great doctors from practicing life saving medicine and the absurdity that it falls to the parents of kids with cancer to fund trials.

The system to fund research in this country is broken.

It is broken because it is ruled by grotesque cronyism masked as a peer reviewed grant process that continues to fund the same old research over and over again.  And this is all set against a backdrop of dwindling resources combined with societal apathy about the reality of childhood cancer.

The reality is hard to look at.

It is reinforced by the media’s incorrect portrayal of childhood cancer as a “heroic” struggle involving smiling bald kids enduring harsh treatments and then going on to live normal lives. This is what we need to see – what we want to believe – because the truth is to hard to reconcile.

The truth is that the kids who aren’t killed go on to live anything but ordinary lives and their families – like mine – are broken.

The truth is that kids are killed – over 25,000 over the last decade in the US alone.  Their death and the torture chamber that their families live within is the reality. 

These kids die painfully – often slowly – as their parents sit helpless as they watch their bodies become disfigured and waste away.  They do all they can to try and comfort their child and watch the pain break through the impossibly high doses of medication while their souls are being eviscerated.  

A ragged bloody wound is all that remains of their once whole heart.  
A haunted minefield is all that remains of their memories of their child’s last days, weeks and months.

And still the funding does not come.  

And as these families are pulled down to the bottoms of grief and despair another family is unexpectedly thrust into the machinery that will one day churn them out the other end a broken remnant of what was once a whole entity.  

And on and on it goes as the world remains oblivious.

Goodnight, Ronan. I miss you. I love you. I hope you are safe. Goodnight all you lovies of this blog reading world. I just wanted to take a second to say thank you to any of you that donated to my Rissy’s mission trip. She just texted me to tell me that they are now 500 dollars OVER the amount that they were trying to raise. That makes my heart happy. She is leaving tomorrow. Please keep her in your thoughts, prayers, or whatever else it is, that you do. I will be praying to my Ronan for her. Love you all. Sweet dreams.

xoxo