Fright Fest

Well, here we are sixteen days post amp and it feels like an eternity. She is finally acting like her old self again. Her appetite has returned with a vengeance and she has mastered the flight of stairs to get to my bedroom at night, but as I sit here and hour before Halloween arrives, I am struck with the thought of what should we really fear?

My kids begged me to take them to Six Flags Magic Mountain, our local amusement park, for their Halloween Fright Fest. So last night when I would have rather been sitting in my favorite chair, playing some mindless game on Facebook, I was in the freezing cold standing in line for haunted mazes. As you waited in line and walked through the park, people who were dressed in various “frightening” costumes walked around, chasing people, making loud noises and otherwise acting in various “disturbing” ways in an attempt to elicit screams and startles from the crowd. Within the mazes there were more of the same people dressed in costumes attempting to frighten those walking through. Unfortunately, after only the second frightening maze, my children were in tears and asking me to take them home.

Over the past month I have spent an exhausting amount of time researching osteosarcoma, amputations and chemotherapy. What I am looking for are answers. Answers to the question of, “Should I amputate?”, “Should I do chemo?”, “Should I let fate decide?”, “How long is she going to live?”, “How much is it going to cost me?”. I look and I look and I look expecting to finally have printed right there on the web page the exact answer to each of my questions. I have yet to find those answers so I am left to listen to my heart.

Today I took Penny to meet with an oncologist. Yet again, my baby’s life was put in my hands and I was faced with the decision of what price do I put on her life? I was left in a room by myself with only my iPhone and what did I do but again search the internet for the answer. At some point I finally stopped frantically searching the internet for my answer and listened. I listened to my heart. Penny is now one carboplatin treatment down and on her way down the path that I have chosen for her. Or did I choose it? In listening, did I perhaps hear my answer? Who knows? Only time will tell, and then, like my children the night before, I began to cry and begged to go home because I was terrified.

Like my children, who had told me that it wasn’t the scary costumes that frightened them, it was the unknowing that scared them. Not knowing what was lurking in the dark corridor, not knowing what was around the next turn, not knowing when someone was going to jump out at you. I am not frightened by this disease. I am frightened by the battle to fight it. What is lurking in the unseen of her insides? What is waiting around the next turn? When is the next frightening thing going to pop up?

As I drove home, I thought of those who have gone before me, leaving their oncologist’s with the feather of their first chemo treatment in their cap, so optimistic, already making plans for all the extra days that this just bought them, and it made me shutter. How many days did it really get them? How crushed were they when they ultimately lost the battle? Was it worth it?

Last night, not a single one of those “frightening” characters made me flinch or shriek. I actually laughed at most of them. I laughed because they had absolutely no idea of what frightening really is.

Or do they?