Fly a Little Higher Page 4

  Finally, it was Zach’s turn to go in for the procedure. As they wheeled him to the operating room, we came to the “kissing corner” where parents say good-bye before entrusting their precious children into the care of people they’d just met. Zach turned to us with groggy eyes from the “happy juice” the nurse anesthetist had injected into his IV line.

  “I love you,” he said with slurred speech, “and can you make sure you watch my iPod so no one steals it?” I chuckled a little and kissed his forehead.

  “I’ll keep an eye on it,” I assured him and watched as they wheeled him through the steel double doors.

  Rob and I walked silently back to the waiting room, hand in hand, and found a couple of seats in the middle of the room. There was no private place to sit where we could hunker down together and agonize alone. So we ended up sitting next to a family who were joyfully planning their holiday dinner, the mother-in-law and wife sorting through a recipe box and discussing various options. I wondered what our Thanksgiving would be like.

  The cheerful chatter felt like an assault. It was surreal as we waited in the middle of all the prattle of other people’s lives, knowing no matter what news the surgeon would bring, our lives would be changed forever; it was simply a matter of how much. Rob and I sat silently and anxiously watched the screen that hung on the wall for updates as “SobZ” made his way from pre-op, to op, to recovery. I’d brought a book to read but just stared at the page before me, my mind unable to escape to another world.

  Hours later, the surgeon, still in scrubs, called our name and led us to a private consultation room. We sat down on a hard couch; he pulled a chair up close and leaned forward, hands clasped on his knees. He reminded me of Mister Rogers. Mild. Gentle. “Well, the biopsy confirmed Zachary has osteosarcoma.”

  The words hit me with the percussion of a bomb; I couldn’t breathe and my ears rang. As much as I had prepared myself to hear those words, I wasn’t ready for their impact. I’d spent hours on the Internet researching the different possibilities. None of them were good, but osteosarcoma was definitely the most difficult to treat and the most deadly. I’d read a blog by a teenage girl who had battled osteosarcoma. The desperation and sadness in her words were palpable, and I remember thinking, We aren’t doing that. We aren’t doing osteosarcoma.

  While I had chosen to trust God, to hope rather than despair, fear still reared up inside me. The practical part of trusting God is hard and takes practice.

  My gut in knots and fighting tears, I asked the surgeon what the chance of survival was. “Around 70 percent, depending on how far it’s spread,” he replied. An audible gasp escaped as I felt the knots tighten. I already knew these numbers. I’d spent hours sorting through the medical journals and studies looking for answers, for hope. Seventy percent sounded good until I heard it in the context of my own son. Suddenly the odds sounded horrible. All I could hear was 30 percent chance of dying . . . Your fourteen-year-old son has a 30 percent chance of dying.

  The surgeon left the room, closing the door behind him. Rob and I stood and held each other. I sobbed, and Rob remained stoic. A volunteer, an older gentleman with an atrocious toupee and a theatrical mustache, peeked into the room and with an apologetic look told us we must leave, the room was for consultation only. We left the solitude of the room and headed back to our seats by the happy family. They were on to planning dessert.

  I knew people at home were waiting to hear the news, so I moved to a seat that was a little more private and less noisy. Rob stayed in his seat so he could keep an eye on the screen and know where Zach was. Holding my emotions in, and doing my best to be pragmatic, I dialed the phone. My first call was to my parents. Mom answered the phone.

  “It’s cancer. Osteosarcoma.”

  “Oh! Laur . . .” she choked.

  A sob caught in my throat. “Don’t. Don’t do that. I can’t go there right now. We still have to tell him. I still have to go in and tell my son he has cancer, and I don’t want to be a mess. I don’t want him to have to deal with that.” She cleared her throat and took her marching orders to call the rest of the family: my six siblings, grandma, and aunts and uncles.

  My next call was to Alli, who was waiting for news in her dorm just across the Mississippi River.

  “Hi, Mom.” She answered her phone after the first ring.

  “Hi, hon. It’s cancer,” I said. She immediately broke down into sobs. “We have to meet with oncology in the next day or two. I’m not sure what things will look like until then.”

  “Mom? Is Zach going to die?”

  “There’s a 70 percent chance that he won’t,” I answered. “Just pray, Al. Pray hard.”

  “I will,” she said through tears. “I’m going to talk to my professors and see if I can get some time off. I don’t know if it will be possible, with finals coming up and all.”

  “We’ll figure something out. Babe, I have to call a few more people. I’ll call you when we get home tonight.”

  I continued making my way down my list of friends and coworkers, breaking down a little more with each call until the tears finally forced their way out.

  When I finished the calls, I looked up to see a woman around my age with dark, long hair and olive skin, whom I had seen earlier in the morning, seated in a chair across from me. She had entered the waiting room with a man I assumed was her husband, and he had been taken into surgery around the same time as Zach. A doctor accompanied by an interpreter had just exited the waiting room after speaking with her, and silent tears were streaming down her face. Beaten down by having to say the words it’s cancer over and over again, I found myself in a similar state. We sat there together and cried freely without the pressure of having to use words to comfort each other. As I walked past her, I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. She grabbed my hand and held it for a moment without looking at me. I was so grateful for her in that moment. I needed her and she needed me; we were silent witnesses to each other’s pain. When I look back on that moment, I know it was no accident that the seat next to her was free.

  Our name was called again, this time by a nurse who would lead us to Zach’s room. As we walked past the boisterous, recipe-wrangling family who was obviously waiting for a loved one they expected would come out of surgery better than he or she went in, the lobby phone rang. One of their members looked up and jokingly teased me, “You’re closest! It’s your turn to answer it.” In my head I replied sarcastically, Sorry! I get to go tell my son he has cancer. On the outside I just smiled.

  As we walked down the sterile hallway toward the recovery room where Zach was coming out of the anesthesia, I prepared myself to say those words: Zach, it’s cancer. I’d practiced while in the shower for a couple of days, saying the words out loud, over and over again, trying not to cry. It hadn’t worked. Every time I said those three words out loud, it was like throwing a switch in my heart with a line to my tear ducts. Tears would come, and there was no stopping them.

  We walked through the nurses’ station and into the glass-enclosed room. I pulled the mauve-and-green checkered curtain back to see Zach lying in the bed, a blanket pulled up to his chin. He was in a drug-induced slumber.

  Rob and I sat quietly by his bedside, looking at him and wondering how he would handle the news . . . Cancer . . . cancer . . . cancer.

  As I sat there and prayed for the strength to say that horrible word, a powerful sense of peace washed over me. It was like being wrapped in a warm, wool blanket after being out in a freezing Minnesota blizzard. The knot in my gut loosened, and the fear suddenly lost its power, replaced instead by resolve and confidence that things would be okay.

  Rob looked up at me for a moment from Zach’s bedside, all his attention focused on Zach. I walked over to him, and he grabbed my hand. “You doing okay?”

  I nodded and smiled. I was okay. I was peaceful.

  Zach started to come around as the anesthesia wore off. He asked for a sip of water, then dozed off a little bit. The surgeon walked into the roo
m and quietly asked if we’d had a chance to tell Zach the news. We hadn’t, so the doctor pulled a chair up alongside Zach’s bed, then reached over and gently laid his hand on Zach’s leg to wake him. Zach turned his head and did his best to focus.

  “Zachary, we did the biopsy and you have osteosarcoma,” he said in his oddly peaceful and gentle way, cancer a more normal part of his life than it was ours.

  Zach groggily nodded his head and closed his eyes as the life-altering news settled in, the pain medication providing a buffer. I offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving. God knew what He was doing.

  As he gradually became more clear-headed, Zach seemed focused on getting home and getting on with it. He asked some questions about his diagnosis and what was going to happen next, but what he was really wondering was whether he would be able to go to school and how it would affect his social life. We gave him as much information as we had without being too overwhelming. We told him the next appointment would be with the oncologist in a few days. Once he was feeling well enough to move around and get dressed, he just wanted to go home.

  We drove home in silence, each of us pondering the news, the sky thick with dark clouds on a rainy November afternoon. As we descended into the St. Croix Valley, the valley of the Holy Cross, there was a tiny break in the cloud cover and a single beam of sunshine broke through. A rainbow formed directly in front of us over the road ahead. As I rested my head on the cool, damp window, a silent tear ran down my cheek and I smiled. Okay. I get it. You’ve got this, I thought. I nudged Rob, who was intently focused on the road ahead, and directed him to look up.

  WE PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY AROUND FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING, exhausted. The abandoned basketball hoop was silhouetted against the darkening sky, the net dripping from the rain. Once inside, Rob pulled his wallet out of his jacket and placed it in its usual spot on the shelf in the closet, then hung up his coat. Zach kicked his shoes off into the closet, tossed his coat on the floor, and took a seat at the kitchen table. None of us had eaten all day; Zach because he wasn’t allowed, Rob and I because of nerves.

  I hung my purse on a hook in the kitchen and hung my coat over it, then turned to Rob and Zach.

  “When do you want to tell Sam and Grace?” I asked them both. I was grateful the two of them were in their bedrooms. I hadn’t thought this far ahead, and it gave us a minute to plan.

  “It’s up to you guys,” Zach said as he looked at Rob and me and shrugged.

  “We should probably call them down now,” Rob said wearily.

  I went up to their rooms and knocked on each door. “Hey, guys? Can you come down? We need to tell you how things went today.”

  They both emerged from their rooms with looks of concern on their faces. I indicated for them to take a seat at the kitchen table where Rob now sat next to Zach, in their usual spots. Once everyone was seated, I nodded to Rob.

  “Well, we got some bad news today,” he started. “We found out that Zach has a cancer called osteosarcoma. We have another appointment in a few days with an oncologist.” He turned to Grace. “A cancer doctor. We know he will need chemotherapy and surgery, but we don’t know much more than that right now.”

  Sam dropped his eyes to his hands and nodded his head. “Okay,” he said, raising his eyes to Zach. “I guess you just do whatever you have to in order to get better.”

  Zach nodded his head in silent agreement.

  Grace sat quietly. At age eleven, she didn’t understand what it all meant—cancer, chemotherapy, surgery—but she knew it was serious and it involved her big brother.

  Headlights shone through the window in the living room adjacent to the kitchen. I walked to the front door and opened it. It was the assistant chief of the fire department, whom I had worked with for five years, and his wife. With a quick hello, they whisked by me and, with the help of Rob and the kids, spread out a feast of hot rotisserie chicken, fresh mashed potatoes, buttered corn, warm rolls, salad, and pie on the kitchen table. The mouthwatering aroma triggered our neglected stomachs to instantly rumble and reminded us we were starving.

  As fast as they came in, they were walking out the door, mindful of our need to be alone and together as a family.

  They backed out of the driveway, the daylight having given way to darkness. I turned to the kitchen table where everyone was finding their seats, the light above the table casting a Norman Rockwell-like glow on the scene. I sat down at my place at the table, where I’d sat since the kids were babies, and watched as everyone loaded their plates with slices of chicken and mounds of potatoes and gravy.

  I picked up my own plate and began dipping into the delightful and unexpected banquet, and listened to the chatter as the kids and Rob shared the more interesting parts of the day, the parts that were about more than just cancer. I sat quietly for a moment and absorbed the scene. So this is how it is, I thought. At the end of the day, we are just a family who loves each other. We’d just received devastating news and yet here we were, together and joyful. In that moment, we were okay, all of us just happy to be back together after a long and hard day.

  I took a bite, savoring the flavors, and wondered at how life, even in the darkest moments, could be so good.

  Six

  December 2009

  A COUPLE DAYS HAD PASSED, AND THE NEWS THAT ZACH HAD CANCER had begun to sink in. We were back at the U of M campus at the Masonic Cancer Center for an appointment with the oncology doctor. As we walked up the sidewalk, we passed several people smoking cigarettes, some with hospital gowns on and hooked up to IV poles. The irony didn’t escape Zach; he looked over his shoulder at me and cocked an eyebrow.

  We stepped into the crowded waiting room with its scuffed walls, outdated décor, and a big basket of hand-knitted caps on a shelf just inside the door. There was a children’s play area in the corner, the only part of the room where an attempt had been made to bring any cheer into the space. It smelled of hand sanitizer and stale coffee.

  Zach, the only patient under the age of forty, looked around trying to find a set of three chairs in a corner somewhere. He and Rob headed for some window seats while I went to the desk to check in. The place was busy—bald people coming and going; people in wheelchairs parked in aisles between chairs and caregivers alongside. The staff was frantically trying to keep up, handing out doctors’ orders for this test or that scan, doing their best to give directions to places in the farthest reaches of the expansive U of M campus.

  I stood there, insurance card in hand, and thought, I hate this place. Who wants to hang out with a bunch of sick people? An extremely thin woman behind the counter with overdone hair and heavy makeup hung up the phone and turned to me. “Name?”

  “Zachary Sobiech,” I replied.

  She reached over into a file drawer and pulled out a chart. I took a few squirts of the foam hand sanitizer from a canister that hung on the wall. The place looked so old and worn-out it made me feel dirty.

  She handed me some paperwork and took the insurance card to scan into the computer. I walked to the chair beside Rob, sat down, and looked around. People of all different ethnicities packed the room. I could pick out the seasoned patients. They were the ones dressed in sweats, tennis shoes, and hats or head scarves. The caregivers stood apart from the sick, more talkative and a bit more polished in appearance. It was hard to tell the economic statuses of the patients; cancer treatments have a way of making people look generic.

  I wondered what Zach would look like with no hair and how long it would be before we would blend in. Maybe Zach wouldn’t lose his hair, I silently hoped. If he lost his hair but kept his eyebrows, that wouldn’t be so bad. Bald eyebrows seemed to be the thing that turned a person into just another cancer patient. I finished the paperwork and walked up to the desk to hand it in. The clerk pointed to a file rack hanging on the wall next to a huge white board with all the doctors’ names and magnets that indicated who was on time and who was running late. “Put it in there,” she said.

  I nodded and p
laced Zach’s chart in the front and sat back down. A nurse came out a moment later, grabbed the chart, and called our name. As we walked across the room, I noticed a few dirty looks from people who had been there before us. Then I saw the sign above the file rack: “Place your file in the back.” Oops. Wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  She brought Zach into the lab for a blood draw, the first of hundreds he would have over the next three years, then we were taken to a clean, very beige room to wait for the doctor. Zach was calm and patient, just taking it all in as it came his way.

  A young woman in a black-and-white floral patterned skirt with a black blouse and short hair that she managed to pull back into a little ponytail walked into the room. “Hello. My name is Nicole. I’m the heme-onc intern working with the oncologist.”

  The what? He-monk? What’s a he-monk? I didn’t ask; I was too busy trying to keep up as she proceeded to hand me a few packets of information and a little yellow sheet with a calendar printed on it and handwritten script in various colors on each day.

  “Here is the chemotherapy schedule that Zach will be starting,” she said. “We start with chemo first because studies have shown that survival rates are better if we begin with chemotherapy. After around three months of the chemo regimen, Zach will have surgery to remove the tumor from his hip. Once he has recovered from the surgery, he will continue for an additional five months of chemotherapy.”

  My mind was racing. I had talked to a family from our church about their son who had been battling leukemia. He’d had six rounds of chemotherapy. I looked down at the little yellow calendar. Zach would need eighteen! Would he be in the hospital or would it be outpatient? He’d probably be missing a lot of school. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad . . . a day for chemo, a day to recover, and then back to school. Surely the school would be accommodating.

  “Zach, you’ll need to be homeschooled while you’re on chemotherapy,” the intern said to Zach.