Celebrating!!

Celebration!  

Approximately 2 minutes after Strother got a call from his oncologist saying he was clear from cancer he called his mama and papa. And we spread the news faster than that cancer could ever grow. 

His surgeons took cell samples from every part of his body to be sent off to pathology for study. The tumor, also sent to be studied closely, was larger than I could have imagined. I said small personal watermelon. It was not small. And Strother was trying to breathe for four months. 

Today Strother showed me his incision site. It’s a complicated scar starting close to his armpit and drawing down horizontally through his rib cage. The surgeons were virtuosos and athletic wonders with their craft that day. To excise a tumor that size on a young man with profound scoliosis and a spinal cord injury took no less than astonishing expertise. And I’m so pleased to report that his scar looks more like he went through all of this three years ago, not three weeks. 

So we shouted and danced! And a weight was lifted physically and virtually off of his chest.  

Still I find vaults of grief I wander in and out of. My boy is so weak. So vulnerable. So not what he was “before.” I wish I could take all of his exhaustion and spin it into strength from the joy the rest of us feel. 

The human experience is to find beauty, and love and joy. 

So let’s find beauty in the most precise chemotherapy regimen possible. It was curated, honed and then perfectly executed. Twelve hours after his diagnosis his team knew what to do, how to do it, and then treated my son for the next four months with precision and kindness.  

I am in awe of the millions of hours people have spent researching aggressive cancers, the hundreds of thousands of patients who went through trials — and errors — to shape what cancer treatment looks like today. It is the best of humanity.

We were grateful to participate in a study for future patients with cancer by offering the details of his treatment to a group of clinicians hoping to make this process even more accurate. Isn’t that the most beautiful thing?

Love, even in a dark place, when I felt real and unabated fear, I was reminded by people all over the world how loved my boy is. To those I’ve met who quietly say they too have been touched by cancer (which at this point is most of us), please keep sharing. It was important and powerful that I knew his story was where we all have intersecting struggles. And the love poured out. Everywhere I looked we had champions. 

But joy. Oh that telephone call. “No more cancer cells detected mama, “ he said. If you ever want to see this mama weep, say that. 

Strother is enrolled for the fall semester at TCU. He will live near the school of business with two pledge brothers (Sigma Nu’s literally gave their blood for this guy). He bought a beater of a Ford 1977 F-150 for cheap, but needs a lot of work and YES he is accepting any and all motor-heads who’d like to jump in and help.  He has peach fuzz growing back all over, a little mustache and a soul patch proudly growing in. 

We went to the end of the block and back today.  No assistance needed. He is able to get in and out of his truck, also unaided. Strother can go out, be in a crowd, hang out late. He needs to break away from us so badly.  He needs friends, activities, diversions. He needs normal. 

And time. 

The real celebration will look like Strother living his life. Checking in once in a while. But mostly looking back on all of this like it was a blur of chemicals and surgeries and a small blip in a large life he has in front of him.