Children are amazing, and I can understand why some people devote their lives to them. Myself, I know I lack many of the qualities required for dealing with them. Patience, gentleness and energy being the main three. Personally, I never really planned on fatherhood and I had actually planned against it occurring twice. Through no fault of their own, they were both born, beating the odds of other genetic combinations. In their own rights they are both amazing. And as well, they are both absolutely consuming of energy, sleep and time.
Now enter the world of pediatric oncology. Kids having cancer is absolutely the worst thing I can think of. Maybe that is only due to my lack of having an original mind, but more likely it is because of where I have spent the last year. Watching children spend their very few short years inside a hospital, living a very marginal type of life. For a lot of them, it is a life filled mostly with pain and suffering. It is days passed with blood transfusions, radiation, surgery and chemotherapy. It is puking, peeling, diarrhea, nose tubes, central lines, dressing changes, infections and medications. It is parents being sad, parents being mad. Frustration, humiliation and hours watching Treehouse. All for some hope that maybe someday things will get better.
The better part of childhood is the learning. It is only natural, that when you look at a child and see them learning new things. See how everything new is so exciting, you can't help but smile. It emits a strange empathic feeling. Memories of all the new and exciting things you yourself once learned. It is these feelings I have when I look upon my own children, and it is the same feelings I have when I watch the other children in oncology, energetically playing in the halls.
So it is with great sadness that I learned today of yet another child who has passed away. He is the second in as many weeks, of two families that we have weathered through this last year. He was only slightly older than my own son. Only two years old, but he spent over half his life battling cancer. If ever I had beliefs in a karmatic existance, I would have to say, it is things like this that utterly shatter it. Unfortunately life lacks balance, it is only for us to rationalize a balance to keep us away from madness.
