Riding for Roses

This morning we let Spencer go to school with his port accessed (a needle in his chest and a tube hanging down from it) because he really wanted to go. He also brought his Tukong uniform so he could go to martial arts class. I have to confess I was a little ambivalent about this plan. Yesterday, we started new chemotherapy medications and left the oncologist with a tube in his port-a-cath. A port-a-cath is a cather inserted into a large vein (in the neck in this case) with a metal disk under the skin (just below Spencer’s left collar bone) that allows clean and easy access to the catheter. When they need to draw blood or deliver IV medication, they poke a needle through his skin into the disk. This gives access to the catheter with reduced risk of infection. We apply “numbing cream” (lidocaine and prilocaine) at least 30 minutes before going to the oncologist and the access doesn’t even hurt. This week, we are doing chemotherapy at home, so we left the oncologist with the port still accessed and a tube hanging out of a needle poked into Spencer’s chest.

We had a neuropsych appointment, just for the parents, today and we didn’t know what we were going to do with Spencer. Being the silly adults that we are, we simply assumed that with a needle in his chest with a tube hanging from it, he would want to skip school and martial arts. Last night, he begged us to let him go to school and Tukong and was willing to accept restrictions – most notably skipping recess so he would be climbing and swinging on a playscape and possibly get the tube caught. Problem solved – no need to worry about what to do with Spencer during our appointment with his neuropsychologist. So, I wrote a note for his teacher detailing chemotherapy status and restrictions due to having the port in and we were off.

After I delightful readout on the baseline test (which I already described), I dropped Rachel at work and made sure to head for Tukong early so I could talk with the master and instructors about the port. The plan for Tukong today including tumbling practice and neither Spencer nor I thought that would be a good activity. Fortunately, I watch class enough and have barely enough knowledge about what goes on that Master Ali let me train Spencer while the other kids were doing tumbling. First, the Master spent a minute with Spencer reviewing roundhouse turnaround kicks and then I acted as (very junior, sub-white-belt) instructor and held the kicking target. Spencer’s form improved immensely today. He’s doing full turns on the turnaround kick. After class, Master Ali said “your turnaround is better than the green belts” and had a talk with Spencer about how brave he was about chemotherapy and keeping up with his training despite obstacles.

Some days, I just love life.