Coronavirus & cancer: happy endings
This is a picture of Ella and her dad ceremonially burning her chemotherapy schedule :-) Finally on September 21st she had her final chemo infusion and the chart that had governed our lives for three months could be ripped from the wall and burnt to a cinder.
Ella was given the all clear on September 29. It was a bit of an anti-climax in the end. This was mainly because the ability for us to track her AFP on a weekly basis meant we already knew that there was no longer any trace of cancerous cells. But it was also because a few weeks before — when she finished her final inpatient treatment on September 12 the moment was marked by her ringing the bell and collecting her certificate at Bristol Children’s Hospital and for her, me and Spencer that was really the moment we had been waiting for.
The inpatient treatments were brutal. After the first the AFP dropped very low so we knew it was working and we just had had to get through the next three. That’s why this moment was so huge for all of us. It marked the end of her suffering.
Of course we know that this isn’t really the end as such. She will be monitored for the next five years. However the prognosis is good and it is only when i’m very tired and it’s dark and cold and i’m on my own that I can hear the little gremlin whispering ‘ but what if it comes back?’.
Last week the Hickman line came out. It was a slightly more bloody and involved affair than we had hoped. At one point the radiologist tasked with removing it suggested that he patch it up and send her back to the surgeon who had put it in (too deeply it turned out) because he was worried he would have to cut too far and might leave a bigger scar. Ella, conscious, but hidden under a paper cover wasn’t having any of it. ‘Just get it out’ she said, ‘it’s not going to be anywhere near as big as the one on my stomach!’. And so he did.
We have felt the fuzz of her hair starting to go back on her head and the scar on her chest is healing nicely. She had a shower for the first time in months this morning and tomorrow my brother is taking her climbing. These are steps back to normality which I am very grateful for. I know the mental scars will be with us all for some time to come. Kudos to Beechen Cliff (my son’s school) for the sensitive way they have worked with him and the support he has been given — all without me having to request it. I am also grateful to both schools for allowing us some leave next month to hopefully get away and recuperate (COVID allowing).
So this is me signing off for now. Time to go and enjoy normality (such as it is these days). Thanks to everyone for their love and support. It made the journey just that bit more doable.
