Our Family - Coping with Cancer

Seth was born and welcomed into our family - my daughter's 4th. He was gorgeous and happy:

However his mum couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right, every now and again he just wouldn't keep his milk down but that's not so unusual and on one of her visits a doctor just advised her to change his milk and sent them on their way. He was almost one when she decided no, this just isn't right - now he also had a hydrocele (swollen testicle) so she trooped along to the doctor again to try and get some answers. The doctor couldn't find anything and said he'd likely been kicked by one of the other children causing the swelling - but just to be on the safe side she could go and have it scanned. She took him to the hospital where he was examined and scanned to see just what the swelling was:

So - you see the swollen testicle.... ouch! But - can you see the 10cm tumour on his liver above it? My daughter was shown into a room and as everyone started to be over nice to her she began to be alarmed. They gently broke the news to her that he had liver cancer and it was terminal. A hydrocele is a common symptom alongside 'Hepatoblastoma' as liver cancer is called, so the consultants at the hospital realised this was a possibility immediately. She and Seth were driven in an ambulance to Bristol Hospital via their home so that the other children could say goodbye to him - both a kindness and rather horrifying! Dad held the fort at home with the other children and the rest of our family gathered in Bristol hospital in a bit of a daze.

I cannot praise Bristol Hospital enough - they were fabulous, talking of treatment plans and how it would go, and as I gazed around at other little children, bald, wheeling things they were attached to around as they played I thought, 'how is this our life?' One day we thought he had a milk intolerance - and the next this!!! After a while I stopped the doctor who was talking about chemotherapy and operations, "Are you telling us there is a chance Seth will live?" I asked. "Yes" they assured us - there was treatment and hope of a good outcome. So - the journey began and it was pretty awful - Seth's first day of chemotherapy was on his first birthday:

I immediately started treating him with homeopathy alongside but also booked one of the homeopathic doctors in Bristol attached to the hospital to treat him because I was not able to be objective. What can I say.... it wasn't pretty - poor Seth had months of chemotherapy. He was one of the lucky ones (in fact one of the consultants confided in us that every child who used homeopathy did better but they weren't allowed to recommend it). His dad and the other children as well as other members of our family lived or stayed at the nearby CLIC house to support and help and be together as much as possible.

This is Seth towards the end of his cancer treatment - he lost so much weight and now he has to get well enough for a big operation - either in London or Birmingham. My daughter chose Birmingham and in September Seth and his parents travelled there and he had a 7 hour operation where 70% of his liver was removed:

The poor little boy couldn't even have any pain medication because it was his liver. I looked after the other children so didn't go to Birmingham but other members of the family went and stayed and loved - there was little else we could do.

Anyway, with the resilience of children Seth made a remarkable recovery - we owe a huge debt of gratitude to those surgeons that worked on him for 7 hours, knowing at the time he had little hope of recovery. Against all the odds he did though, he healed and recovered:

Soon, he was home and here you see him just after Christmas, less than three months later:
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So, Seth has gone from strength to strength and yes, we are one of the lucky families, but do you ever really recover? Without doubt there was good and bad and without doubt (apart from Seth) his mum suffered the most. Being told he would die was something that didn't go away for years. For many years she wouldn't even tell him off ("what's the point of disciplining him if he's going to die"?) Every 6 months and then every year he has to go for tests to ensure the cancer hasn't returned - that's always a difficult time. My daughter made many close friends whilst living in the hospital with other families going through the same - of course some of them weren't so lucky and her heart broke alongside theirs. But those friends she met along the way were also a huge blessing. Our eyes were opened to just how amazing the medical profession and other carers are (and to be perfectly honest my natural inclination is to not appreciate them enough because - you know - there are other ways of healing).

This all began nearly 10 years ago now - not a journey we'd have chosen for sure, but we learned and grew and loved more because of it. Seth is now 10 and very blasé about it. He of course remembers nothing and is a typical 10 year old boy with a faint scar across his abdomen which for a while he told people was a shark bite. Here he is last week with his brothers and sisters - he's the one on the right side (and yes - there's a lot of them!)

So - yes - there is always hope, always a rainbow after the storm. I sincerely wish nobody else had to go through this, but sadly I know that every day families are thrown into this life and thank goodness for the wonderful people that do the caring and curing. Our family owe so much to the Bristol Hospital, the hospital at Birmingham and the CLIC house.