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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Heartbroken

On June 22, 2004, I was sitting in Columbus Children's infusion room, holding Finn while we waited to hear if his counts were high enough to get chemo that day. In the end, they weren't but while we were waiting, Ben Brewer, was also there, getting his own chemo. . .and celebrating his 3rd birthday. That night I posted on Finn's CaringBridge site about how sad it was to see kids celebrating their BIRTHDAYS at the oncology clinic. What kind of world do we live in that children even have cancer at all, but that they must celebrate their birthdays in a chemo infusion room?

Ben had neuroblastoma, one of the most hideous childhood cancers. But after a transplant, he was cancer free. A neuroblastoma success story. The Brewers moved to Colorado shortly before we did. And Ben has remained cancer free.

Until now.

Please pray for the Brewers. His mom, Sarah, has her own blog: Stronger Than I Look, which is aptly titled because there is no one who needs to be stronger than a cancer parent.

6 comments:

JennyOnTheBucks said...

words so true never better said

Anonymous said...

My sympathies...it just sucks that once your kid goes off treatment it seems like no one else should be dx...but it keeps happening and kids keep dying....and we just kind of get numb to it. Fuck cancer!
lMnop

1dreamr said...

Way too many stories like this... I just don't get it. Praying for Ben and his family....

Leeann said...

That is nothing but heartbreaking and first class SUCK.

Scary for them and scary for you as well.

Bless his little heart. I wish them all the best.

Don Smiley said...

Natalie,
Forget about the cameras that record directly to DVD. I probably have made a couple of grand tho past few years "fixing" the simple to use cameras.
Sometimes, the tried and true camera formats are the best. Give me the tape and I'll convert it to a DVD free, and give it to you when I see the first three chapters of your book!
Don

Elizabeth Mahlou said...

How well I understand! Worse than celebrating a birthday in a hospital lab is celebrating Christmas in a hospital ward, and my younger daughter celebrated MOST of her growing-up Christmases there. It seemed to come in a set: Christmas and the hospital. Of course, that made for complications with the other kids (and Santa Claus during the younger years). All of that was compounded by tendency to take care of things at the last minute and not being much of a homemaker in the traditional sense because of full-time jobs that often kept me traveling right up until a holiday hit. So, we became flexible. We celebrated our holidays by convenience and not by calendar. I realized that this celebration by convenience had gotten out of hand when a contingent of my kids came to me with the request, "Mom, could we celebrate Christmas on December 25 this year?"

"Yes, of course! As long as your sister is not in the hospital!"

I will pray for the family and add the need for prayer to my prayer list.

Good luck to them, and thank you for telling their story.