This Place Gives Me An Uncomfortableness

Today is the day that we were waiting for.  Jayne finished his chemo four days ago and since then it has been quite the tedious wait for his ANC to drop to zero.  Only after that can it start to recover, finally releasing him from his bounds.  Now that it is, in fact, fully depleted, we can expect to be out of the hospital in a short time.  Well, relatively short, like how a baseball game compares to speed chess.  Along with his neutrophils, his platelets and hemoglobin has also dipped significantly.  He will most likely need to get to some more platelets either today or tomorrow, possibly a blood transfusion in the next few days.  A larger issue has come in to sharp focus with his anemia, one that keeps Shay and I acting uncharacteristically helicopterish with He Who Shall Be Cured.

As most of you might now, Jayne is a standing fiend.  He is becoming quite adept at all manners of mobility save walking, running, wheelchairs, driving a car, flying a plane, and whatever it is that middle-aged women do on the streets of every town in America.  His crawling has improved greatly just over the last few days and he is now starting to sidle along the side of his crib, furiously tasting each few inches, savoring each delectable flavor he finds.  It's the sidling that has given us cause for concern, however.  As part of his leukemia, he is anemic, hence the reason that he needs transfusions so often.  Because of this fact he is very capable of causing internal bleeding within his skull.  A capability he has taken to with much gusto, relishing in watching us squirm, as he grips the top of his crib and proceeds to see just how close he can get his head to whacking it.  He did that very thing yesterday, though not as hard as he could have, and now has a decent bruise on his forehead.  

This squeamishness to watching Jayne act accordingly for his age range is quite difficult for the two of us to experience.  He's a baby learning to crawl and develop his leg muscles, he should be hoovering the floor as he scoots across it.  He should have a chance to figure out not practice for the World Cup with his crib rail.  He wants to put new and interesting things in his mouth?  Sure, that's how he learns about the world and develops an immune system.  But we can't let him be a kid and he can't possibly understand why we keep taking things away from him, confining him to very small areas that we know to be clean, and, even then, we are quick to swoop in and snatch him up.  He is in a quantum state, Schrodinger's Cancer Kid, at once both very strong and quite vulnerable.  It's not a line that is expected to be easy except hypochondriacs or unconscious perpetrators of Munchausen by proxy.  

It's one of the many clear instances that illustrate just how different the next few years will be for the three of us than what was initially expected when we were expecting.  Despite that, however, we are determined to not let it stop be a child as much as he can.  We can't let him really play with too many other children until we are able to get him updated on his vaccinations, which won't happen until he's about a year out from when he's cleared.  But there's plenty more that he can expect to do that we will do our damnedest to facilitate.  Walking with reckless abandon, eating dirt (very occasionally), learning to ride a bike, playing with his dog outside (if we ever get a real dog).  These, and so much more, are all bridges we will have to cross together but the reality that we both have come to accept is that he is not a porcelain doll, despite how pale he is.  We're beating cancer know and so we can deal with anything else that arises on his path to becoming a fully fleshed out human being.  This time in his life will not define him, though he may use it once or twice to get laid.