Sitting down to write about pediatric cancer is super tough. When you’re in the thick of it, you’re just trying to survive one day at a time. And when your done with active treatment, all you want to do is forget. But how can you forget? How can you forget hose super long hospital stays, trying to maintain your normal for your other kids, while balancing life and jobs, and dodging the many curveballs pediatric cancer likes to throw at you?

Weeks to sometimes months in the hospital means an unbalanced schedule, thrown-off sleep patterns, strained relationships with family and friends, and just overall missing out on life. During these times, it is miserable - the constant feeling of missing out and things falling through the cracks. The one very vivid thing I remember about long hospital stays is the wonky sleep schedule. Sometimes my son would feel sick and sleep for days at a time. But then on the flip side, he would have these bursts of energy and sometimes be awake all night, screaming his head off for Mrs. Alice to bring him chocolate ice cream. Keeping a then 2/3-year-old entertained in the hospital was another difficult thing. Most of the time, he had to be confined to bed because of IVs and monitors. Getting any child to sit still for long periods of time takes lots of bribing.

Life at home during active treatment was no picnic either. Jameson was unable to keep up with his big brothers like he wanted to. He couldn’t go to friends’ birthdays or crowded places because of his immune system. I had to give up my career so that I could stay home with him. Daily life included juggling different appointments and therapies from the effects of chemo - and these continue even after the cancer is gone.

Other challenges we faced on the daily were a slew of medication, each with a laundry list of side effects that all need to be watched closely. Steroids made Jameson’s appetite go crazy, and a drop in platelets meant he wouldn’t move for days. With my son being so young going though his cancer journey, it was hard because he couldn’t communicate how he was feeling. As a parent it is heart breaking and frustrating to not know how to help. He also couldn’t really comprehend what was happening. It was hard to hold him down to poke him with needles when we couldn’t tell him it was to save him. To him, it was traumatic.

I am blessed however that hopefully as he goes into remission, he will remember very little of it and, one day, this will all just be a distant memory. As a parent, I think that his cancer journey has had a bigger impact on us parents and his older brothers who will always remember their younger brother’s cancer days.

Written by Jameson’s mom, Stefani

Please consider helping children with cancer and others in our community by scheduling a blood donation at Miller-Keystone Blood Center: https://donor.giveapint.org/donor/schedules/zip