If you took a poll of our friends and asked them what their favorite holiday was, Halloween would win by a landslide. Our friends throw annual costume parties and spend most of the year planning their costumes. We have friends that actually work at a haunted house and most of our friends can't wait to head to rich's fright farm or phantom fright nights at Kennywood park. They all love their horror movies as well. New Releases, classics and awful 70s camp films are all consumed with the same enthusiasm. When the weather turns cooler and the leaves start to turn our friends are excited and ready to be scared.
Personally I'm relatively indifferent about the whole thing. Aside from the one year that I trick or treated in a homemade Chewbacca costume, (someday I will tell that story at a Moth story slam night) I've always had positive Halloween experiences. I don't mind horror films when they are well done and generally gore doesn't really bother me. I could take or leave the haunted house experience, but I had a really fun fall semester in college when I worked as part of the haunted cave tour at Laurel Caverns.
Jamie on the other hand is far from indifferent on this matter. And I think it's pretty easy to tell what side of the fence she is on by disclosing that aside from the occasional psychological thriller, we haven't watched even one honest to goodness horror movie in all the years we've been together. She also has this theory about haunted houses which would probably make a fantastic horror screenplay. The theory suggests that there wouldn't be any better place for a crazed serial killer to blend in and harvest victims than among a bunch of people working at a haunted house pretending to be crazed serial killers.
When October comes and our friends start trying to decide which haunted houses they will visit and planning to view the entire saw series in one night with the lights off we celebrate in a much more genial way. We dress the kids up to collect candy from our fine neighbors and we don some sort of clever couples costume and attend a few annual parties thrown by our friends. We intentionally keep the scary and frightening away from our family.
This year we can't keep the scary and frightening away. The call is coming from inside the house and it's cancer on the line.
Everything is terrifying now in one way or another. The mold on our old dishwasher and on the calking on the tub is a health concern that we have to deal with. Watching Dylan drink from everyone else's water glasses despite having his own is unnerving. Seeing Aidan touch all manner of things around the house (pencils, keyboard, mouse, toys etc) and then stick those same fingers in his mouth is beyond chilling and I think it's seriously going to give us some sort of fright induced cardiac episode. We don't need to visit any haunted houses this Halloween season. We are living in one. I'd say come over and be scared too but NO VISITORS ALLOWED!
Aidan is no longer a "normal kid" he's a cancer patient on chemotherapy and now EVERYTHING is a big deal and it's all scary. Aches and pain and benign symptoms that most parents would take a wait and see approach with have to be reported to his oncology Drs. and given due process. Fevers, headaches, nausea, muscle aches and lethargy are pretty common for kids to experience. Most kids take the day off of school eat chicken soup and watch Nickelodeon all day. If Aidan experiences any of these symptoms alone or in combination there's a better than average chance we are getting admitted to the hospital.
This past Sunday, after Jamie and I returned from the Steeler game, we spent the rest of the night at the Children's hospital ER with Aidan and we were terrified the whole time. Aidan was complaining of back pain and we had no idea what to do. He didn't appear to be in a lot of pain, but back pain was what started this whole process that lead us to finding out he has cancer. The questions and fears were impossible to keep at bay. Has it spread? Does he has some weird infection now? Did we miss a tumor the first time? I spent most of the night feeling like I was going to either throw up or crap my pants (occasionally it felt like there was a distinct possibility both were going to happen at the exact same time) The story has a happy ending though. The Drs attributed his pain to his blood cells regenerating and causing discomfort similar to "growing pains." The pain was localized right to the spot where he had his bone marrow biopsy so this explanation made a lot of sense to my non medical but relatively logical mind. He has felt great for the past couple of days with no need for any pain medication.
By far the scariest part of all of this is the feeling of helplessness and uncertainty. It's heart wrenching, and indescribable. Parents who are going or have gone what we are going through who would understand. You can't put it into words though. There are no adjectives or adverbs that can adequately describe how torturous it is to watch your child suffer and know there is nothing you can do to do to make it hurt less. If I could take it all from him and do it for him I would. I would do the chemotherapy radiation and surgery. I would let them put a hundred IVs in me. I'd suffer all the side effects. I know that 38 years isn't a long time to walk this earth, but if I could trade just another year of life for the promise of both of my boys growing up happy and healthy men, I would do it without hesitation and without fear.
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