Biopsy Day
August 5. One of those dates likely branded in my brain forever. The day we thought we’d take our family camping beside the river, fish, canoe, cook over a campfire.
Instead David, Liam, Harrison, and I headed in toward the hospital. The girls stayed with my sister overnight and Adam opted to stay at home and work on a few things over going to someone’s house. Because of Covid, I couldn’t take Harrison along in to the OR waiting room. But because he was nursing, I couldn’t leave him at home. David sat in the van with him while Liam and I went to meet the surgeon. There is no pediatric oncology orthopedic surgeon on staff at UVA, but one with practicing privileges one day a week. He showed us the MRI and I simply sat there in shock, thinking, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” The tumor is enormous. Twenty centimeters ….so from his knee almost to his hip. What I didn’t realize is the gigantic amount of involvement outside of his bone on the inside of his leg and on the lateral side. I just had no idea. It was absolutely crushing to see.
We signed paper for the biopsy, went to Best Buy to get a laptop so both boys could do school while Liam was in the hospital, and headed back to the surgical waiting room. It was mean enough that Liam had to wait until after lunch for his biopsy (nothing to eat or drink after midnight), but on top of it, they had warned us to be ready to wait a long time because the OR schedule was packed.
I nursed Harrison, walked in with Liam while David went to do some work at the office where Harrison could nap, and registered. We were trying to find two seats to sit together (Covid, you know) and hadn’t even found a spot to sit when they called his name and took us upstairs. It felt as though God just opened up the Red Sea in front of us.
I looked at him in the bed, prepped, ready, warmed by a space suit looking blanket. How had this become his life? They wheeled him away and a nurse led me back toward the main hallway. The instant he was out of sight I started crying. She looked at me.
“Are you ok?”
I nodded, unable to speak. And in this world of Covid where doctors can no longer shake hands when they meet you she put her arm around me and asked, “May I pray with you?” I nodded again because my voice still didn’t work.
There, in that hallway as doctors and nurses walked past, she and I stood with Jesus and she prayed.
When the doctor called to say he was finished he said, “I’m not a pathologist and they don’t like when I say things ahead of them, but I’m going to tell you what I see. This looks like classic osteosarcoma.” When he heard how much pain Liam has he said, “He has to stop weight-bearing immediately. That much pain means the weight of his body could cause a stress fracture and then tumor cells would spill everywhere. And just that fast, Liam got relegated to crutches.