I Could Stand To Hear a Bit More

When you fight in a shield wall formation, as the Greek phalanx did, it relies on several factors to remain effective: you must have predetermined a nice flat space where you and your foe can meet, you cannot allow the enemy to flank you, and you cannot let your forces turn and run.  If any one of these conditions is not met, you cannot have an effective shield wall and you will lose that day.  Why are am I bringing up Iron Age battle tactics?  Has there been a radical new treatment for leukemia discovered that recovers several large, sweaty, and overly muscled men in thongs forming a circle around Jayne's bone marrow?  No.  That would be odd and not really appropriate in any hospital, especially a children's hospital.  The staff gets uncomfortable when half naked men wander the halls.

But it does the image does draw some interesting parallels to the struggle which Jayne is going through.  Some are obvious, some aren't but I'll get to those, if I can.  People always phrase it as, "X is battling cancer", "Y is a fighter", "Z can beat this thing" and there is good cause for that.  Jayne's body, his immune system, his chemistry, his genetics; they are all doing their damnedest to battle these invaders, these wolves in sheep clothing that somehow managed to sneak their way in and create a few turncoats who then, exponentially, began eating away at the core of this polis named Jayne.  He has the Golden Band fighting off the Persians threatening the established order within his body.

We've picked our battleground, monotonous and unremarkable as it is.  Phoenix Children's Hospital has been wonderful (for him) to stay in.  Everyone here is doing everything they can for my little guy, from the techs all the way to lead doctors in oncology and hematology.  Everyone has fallen in love with his smile and his attentiveness.  They support Shay and I in any way possible, be it informing us of everything they are doing to help him every step of the way or just getting us water for the seventy-third time.  They fawn over Jayne, they be as gentle as they can when they are taking his vitals, they draw labs, give medicine, and change his saline bag in what can only be described as a loving manner.  This place is an even battleground and we couldn't ask for better.

In conjunction with the above, we have expert pathologists, ultrasound tech, rad techs, and many many more doing everything they can to get ahead of the sickness festering within the confines of Jayne's vascular system.  There are no hillocks where cavalry is waiting for the perfect time to strike, flanking our well arrayed formation and throwing our plans into disarray.  Knowing is half the battle and, thankfully, not only does everyone here have that same mindset but they afford us the opportunity to learn as much as we can about the condition currently afflicting our boy's tiny body.  We're not left in the dark on anything and every one of our questions is answered, thoroughly and satisfactorily, no matter how many times we ask it in different wording.

The last tactic is probably the most difficult to deal with and it really dawned on me today, after Jayne's PET scan had wrapped up.  The theory behind having a deep line of men in a phalanx is very complex, containing several different battle doctrines into one simple concept: have more men than the other guy.  You need deep lines in a phalanx so that you can replace fallen lines of troops rapidly, so that you can create a larger buffer between your missile infantry and their missile infantry, and lastly, and most grizzly of all, so that the force of all those men, shields pressing against backs, feet churning through the mud, can keep the front line in place and moving forward.  When a melee between two phalanxes occurs, it is, boiled down to it's essential and immediate reality, a shoving match between two forces.  This effectively traps the first two or three rows on either side of the fight, forcing them to stand, fight, and move forward.  They have no choice, they have their companions' shields pressing against their backs and their foes spears jabbing at their bodies at every opportunity.  When we finally got to go back and see Jayne, who was waking up from his minimal anesthesia and starting to fuss at the apparent lack of boob waiting for him, he seemed fine, lack of food notwithstanding.  Shay sat him down and tried to feed him.  As is the usually problem with going a long time between feedings and then hearing your baby crying, when the boy pulled his finger out of the dyke, it proved a little overwhelming for the tyke.  Shay stood up and tried to calm him down - and pulled his IV apart at the broviac branch connector.  We called for a nurse, who came to help immediately but by then there was blood flowing from Jayne's tube as we attempted to staunch the flow of both blood and saline.  Through all of this mayhem (it wasn't quite mayhem, but I'm allowed one or two dramatic embellishments.  Wait until the masked Tyrannosaurus Rex appears at the climax of act two) Jayne was perfectly content.  He calmly watched all of the over-sized infants scramble and pick up tubes, clean up some kind of red milk up, and form an unconscious protective circle around him.  On our way up, I was able to carry him, free of his crib and his IV stand, back to our little slice of sterility on the seventh floor.  It was the first time since we got to the ER on Thursday that I had really done that.  It struck me that Jayne was mirroring those young, fresh-faced lads being forced by their compatriots to literally go toe to toe with another group of young, fresh-faced lads whose only way of making it out alive was to hold on for dear life and thrash about with their spear or short sword.  He doesn't have a choice, he's chained down to fight a lion in the Circus Maximus, and he can't leave until he thoroughly trounces it. 

And he's calm.

Sure he has his moments, what four month old doesn't?  But for the most part, he takes everything in stride.  All of the new people coming in and out, now wearing these funny masks making it even more difficult to properly catalog their faces for future consideration.  All of the needles, all of the tests, all of the small, funny smelling rooms.  Everything that would make adults like you and me quake in our boots and set our wildest fears upon us in our dreams, Jayne has accepted and moved beyond it.  I'm not naive enough to suggest that he understands what is going on and what he is about to endure but he is smart enough to recognize the difference these past few days have presented him against the previous months of his life.  He's ready to dig in, slog through the mud, and come out the other side.  And he will because he has the support of this hospital, the support of his parents, his grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, nurses, doctors, receptionist, and even random people on the internet that didn't know his face from a Cabbage Patch doll just two days ago.  He has real support behind him, people willing to do whatever it takes to assist his fight, his battle, his duel with leukemia.  

Because of you, your actions, he is able to continue focusing on the only thing that really matters.

So are we.