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The Waiting Game
Christine Larkin is pacing up and down the hallway near the MRI room. The door opens, and a nurse in scrubs appears behind a gurney carrying Christine's 13-year-old son, Paul. His eyes are shut. He's still asleep from the general anesthesia. "Hey, here we are," the nurse says cheerfully to Christine, who feels her nervous heartbeat slow slightly and follows them to the recovery room. For an hour and a half, Paul has lain motionless, strapped down inside a loud, narrow cylinder for an MRI scan of his head and spine. During his last checkup here at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Paul was awake, but he panicked inside the machine. Now his doctors knock him out for the tests, which he returns for every three months.For his 48-year-old mom, that's not half as agonizing as the part that comes next -- waiting for the results. The MRI will show whether the brain tumor Paul had is back. Had. Christine and Paul talk about his cancer only in the past tense. That is very important to them, as there's a 30 percent chance of its returning before Paul starts high school next year. He is high risk -- cancer cells were also found in his spinal fluid -- and the chances of an aggressive tumor coming back are highest in the first two years. Test results could come in minutes but sometimes take longer. Last time, Christine had to wait a day for the doctor to call with the words she'd give anything to hear right now: "All clear."
"It's like you're this balloon filled with air, and when you hear that, it expels," she says, remembering the last checkup. "You become weak all over again and think, Okay, we have him for another three months. He's going to be around for the summer ..."
When your child is diagnosed with a brain tumor, your whole life becomes a waiting game. You wait to hear whether the surgeon got the whole tumor. You wait for your child to reach the two-year mark without recurrence, when the odds of survival improve significantly. But perhaps the most frustrating wait is the one that stretches for years, even decades. It's the wait to discover what the effects of powerful radiation and chemotherapy will mean to your child's mental and physical well-being.
For Christine and her family, the waiting began two years ago, when Paul started having mysterious episodes of nausea and vomiting. A golf-ball-size tumor was growing in the back of his head, preventing spinal fluid from draining and producing a feeling like motion sickness. After six months of ruling out the typical causes -- ear infections and sinusitis -- his pediatrician ordered a complete workup.
On a blue-sky Friday in April 2005, George Larkin, Paul's dad and Christine's ex-husband, picked up his middle son from a local baseball game to go for an MRI scan. Two days later, on the way to a Weight Watchers regional staff meeting, Christine got a call from the pediatrician. It was Sunday, and she knew the news couldn't be good. "They found a tumor," the pediatrician said.
Stunned, she walked into her meeting room, blurted out the news and then started sobbing. Her staff sent her home, but before she got in the car, she dialed George. "Oh, my God," he said. "Oh, my God." Over the next few weeks, Christine and George met with several surgeons. They finally scheduled surgery at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, two hours from their homes in Windsor, California.
Paul's cancer, called a medulloblastoma, was located in the back of his brain near the cerebellum and brain stem, which controls coordination and balance. The surgeon removed as much as possible without damaging healthy tissue. The next step was for Paul to recuperate at home for one month before starting radiation, followed by chemotherapy.
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