The cause?!

I'm starting to wonder if some of my fears and anxieties will ever really go away.  Something happened last night that has me questioning how long it will take if it ever will.  But first, backstory.

A few weeks ago Tyson and Brennon were rollerblading down a steep hill around the corner.  Tyson, thinking he was being wise, decided to take along a 5' paint roller handle as a sort of brake system.

"Mom, I was just going so fast, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to stop, so I used the stick to kind of slow me down.  But the end of the stick got caught in one of the cracks-- you know the breaks that make the cement square?-- and it jammed me in the stomach.  I immediately felt like I just needed to go to sleep."

For hours after, he was doubled over, gasping, moaning, and crying.  He threw up for a bit, but it was the pain that worried me.  I researched all of the symptoms of internal bleeding, wondering if we needed to rush him into the ER or something.  Randy talked me down, telling me of a time the same sort of thing happened to him when he was a kid, and that he felt better after a few days.  Tyson was feeling much better by dinner.  I hadn't thought about it since, until last night.

After getting Tyson some nausea medicine around lunchtime yesterday, I went back out to finish up the yard work Randy and I have been doing the last few days.  When we came in to begin making dinner, Tyson was near tears.  By the time we were sitting down for dinner, he was in tears.  Here is where my anxiety kicked in big time.  This wasn't from a pole slamming into his gut, making him hurt and vomit.  We couldn't figure out what it was, seeing as the boy hasn't left the house in three weeks.  As I hovered over the hunched, skinny back of my son puking into the toilet, rubbing and tickling his back as he wretched, I found myself sick to my own stomach with feelings I know all too well.  The flashbacks started.

As I looked at his stomach from every angle, I remembered the first time we saw Caden's stomach.  I remember reaching out to touch it, it was so round and distended, asking him when the last time he went poop was-- because who immediately thinks there is a pineapple sized tumor in their child's abdomen?!  As I pressed his stomach, Caden sucked in air so fast and told me how much it hurt around his clenched teeth. I remembered the pain I caused Caden, and gingerly pressed Tyson's belly, certain I was going to find a rounded tumor just below my fingers.  I cannot tell you how scared I was to find a hardened mass below his skin.

And then the questions started to pour out, questions I have asked a hundred times, questions to understand things down to a molecular level. No longer can my kids say, "I don't feel well."  I have to have very detailed descriptions of every aspect.  Question after question my anxiety grew as I became more and more certain that another of my sons-- the one that reminds me most of Caden in so many ways-- was going to be sucked into a hellish world of needles and pain and then taken from me.

My family is not allowed to fake throwing up in my presence.  The sound does things to me.  But Tyson wasn't faking.  It was a living nightmare to see Tyson's skinny frame bent over a toilet, so defeated looking and exhausted after a particularly hard wretch.  There is a difference when you know what's causing the pain and puking-- like his rollerblading accident a few weeks ago-- and this unknown vomiting without a clear reason.  And in my head, the clear reason is going to be cancer, because that's just my luck.  My mind is not a silver-lining place from time to time.

 Ty asked Randy for a priesthood blessing, and then we tucked him into bed down by us.  Even seeing his bed in this front room, though it looks different from when Caden's bed was in here, was hard.  I had to talk myself down many different times last night.  I'm grateful I was able to, but the anxiety shot so high so fast, I truly did wonder if I would ever get to the point where a stomach ache can just be a stomach ache, where I don't immediately begin to convince myself that my children are going to suffer, and suffer, and then suffer and die.

He didn't throw up again after his blessing and was able to sleep a full twelve hours.  The sun is shining, my kids are healthy, there is arguing in the home-- my world is once again right this gorgeous Easter day!  I miss my Caden, but I don't miss witnessing him throwing up and knowing I can't do anything but take him back for more chemo.