Beyond Angeles

Chemo wipes Jefren out

Every time Jefren took the first chemo in his five-week cycle, he ended up back in the hospital with complications. In the middle of February, it happened again.

A week after he came home from his first treatment, Jefren got sick. This time, it was this throat: it was red, spotted, and it hurt him to swallow. He also had a temperature.

He went back into the hospital again. He got a private room. One of the advantages of the side-effect was they considered him infectious, so he was put in a private room. That was more comfortable for all of us: there weren’t two TV’s competing, there was no one else hearing our conversations, and when we turned out the lights, it was dark. But it also meant Jefren couldn’t go to activities, like the baking pizza on Thursdays or the Wednesday teen group. He also couldn’t go to the classroom or even into the hall to play the computer.

Usually, he got the Super Nintendo wheeled into his room and played that. Occasionally, he had them bring in the Sega Genesis, but not often. Once they got the Nintendo 64™, he asked for that all the time. Once, Maggie even let him have it in his room all weekend while she was away, “provided you don’t let anyone take it out of your room.” He didn’t.

Other than that, it was watch TV or get movies from the conference room or the library upstairs. The conference room was always the first choice: parents had donated almost a hundred movies to the children on 3JC West. They were stored in the conference room— all we had to do was walk about twenty feet to get them.

The next choice was the library upstairs. They had hundreds of tapes, video and audio, and a good selection of books. But they were on the eighth floor, and one wall was windows. Remember my fear of heights?

Still, I went up fairly often to get movies because I kept thinking I should be able to overcome this height thing — at least for eight floors. Amy said a friend, who knew Chinese herbs, told her mother to eat an egg every other day to overcome her fear of heights. I tried eating more eggs, and it did help.

Janet gets sick

During this stay, Janet came down with a bad cold. Nobody thought it was a good idea to expose Jefren to it, and Janet deserved a rest, so she came home and I went to Iowa City.

I had a room in the Ronald McDonald House, and slept there at night. Other than that, I was with Jefren most of the time. We watched a lot of TV, played games, and chatted.

Jefren couldn’t swallow

During this infection, Jefren’s throat hurt him constantly. There was nothing they could do about it. They didn’t have any painkillers that could numb his throat enough for him to swallow even Jell-o comfortably.

We kept asking the doctor about it. It was Dr. Buckman, the fourth of the five staff doctors who oversaw Jefren. When we asked about Jefren’s throat, he told us his throat would stop hurting when his blood count (white blood cells and platelets) went up. We had thought the soreness was due to an infection, but he corrected us.

“It’s a side effect of the chemo,” he told us. Jefren was getting the G-CSF shots, but there wasn’t much more anyone could do.

So we thought.

Calling in the Reserves

I told Amy what was going on and asked her what we could do about it. She said Mars—yup, the planet— was causing a lot of physical problems for people right then.

“Wait a moment, let me check if it’s Mars,” she said. She was silent for a moment, then said, “Yes, it’s Mars.”

She suggested we honor Mars. After we hung up, I looked at Mars. I was amazed—there was Mars, quite clearly, a very distinct personality and traits. I also looked at the other planets having never done that before, and discovered each was very distinct from the others. Some of the traits were extremely incompatible with others, and I realized the ancient descriptions were right—some were enemies, some friends, some neutral, each affecting the strengths and comforts of the other planets in a positive, negative or neutral way.

Amy also mentions Venus, and suggests we get a small diamond (“it should be small because it’s for a child”), put it on a picture of the Virgin Mary, and ask Her to remove discomfort from his “sweet little body.”

Even though I was brought up Jewish, I didn’t have any problem asking the Blessed Virgin Mary for help, because I understood that all the saints from all disciplines were generous and helpful. But Janet would be concerned about a picture of Mary, I knew. I asked Amy if Mahalakshmi or someone else would do.

“No, it has to be Mary,” she said. “Mary is very active on the planet now, and she has been helping me with other projects as well.”

That was okay with me, and I figured Janet would just adjust. She did.

I looked, and sure enough, I saw Mary very lively on much of the world. I also understood that many Saints from many different cultures were still aiding the world, all to a common purpose, and that they all had great value raising humanity to higher levels. All of them are on the same “team,” so it was no problem for me to pray to different Saints, if they could help with Jefren.

I did have a problem finding a picture—the Christian bookstore in town is Protestant, and doesn’t carry pictures of Mary, so I didn’t know where else to look. But I found one— a refrigerator magnet! A nice 2”x3” picture of the Virgin Mary I put it on my dresser. We put a small (.3 carat) diamond ring Janet’s grandmother left her on a silver chain and wrapped it around the picture.

Then we prayed that Jefren’s pain and discomfort be removed from “his sweet little body.”

Jefren felt better and got better several days after that. But I continued to honor Mars and Venus, and prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary every day for several months. Sometime during the summer, I noticed Mary wasn’t there anymore. That was okay— Jefren was doing fine. But She was gone before we could thank Her.

Months later, after all this was over, I found myself driving in a sleet storm in 5:00 rush hour traffic on the interstate in Des Moines; not used to driving in the big city those days, at 65 mph, on ice, I was terrified. Mary sat down in the passenger seat. “You don’t have to worry,” She told me.

Another “new” cast

Jefren’s hinged cast only lasted three weeks. The next time he saw Dr. Gladstone, they took off that cast, and instead of putting a new one on, gave him a soft wrap-around cast with thin metal strips to keep his leg straight. Jefren loved it: he could take it off to take a bath, get dressed, undressed, whatever. It was held together by Velcro, so it was easy for him to take off and put on.

Jefren gets out

The new cast weighed almost nothing. Jefren still needed his walker, but he could get out more. He started going shopping with us— Wal-Mart, Hy-Vee, Target. He loved driving around in the electric handicap wheelchairs they each had. Our public library had the fastest one, and Jefren kept trying to race me from one end to the other because he knew he could win. Once, in a store, he drove it into a display, knocking down several boxes (oops), but most of the time he was fine.

When he went with me to pick up Eli after Sunday school, instead of waiting in the car he went in to visit his old teachers.

Sometimes, in a store or somewhere, someone would ask what happened to his leg. Jefren just said “I had surgery.” He never mentioned cancer, chemotherapy or days and days in the hospital. Just “I had surgery,” and that was all.

Weeks go by

As we moved through Jefren’s chemo cycle, the treatments became more routine, more comfortable for all of us. Jefren wasn’t getting sick as much, Janet and I were on a good routine taking turns taking care of boys, the house, and ourselves.

We were cooking again. The Sisterhood had stopped their meals sometime in December. It actually came from my side: much of the food, however delicious, was too spicy for me and gave me indigestion. Janet loved it, but most of it fell on me to eat, since she was at the hospital more. I thought we didn’t need it anymore. That was a big mistake. Cooking was a way for people to give love to Jefren. Stopping that stopped that flow of love. I never said anything about stopping, but had mentally let go. The next time it came up, Gail said everyone was getting tired cooking. Several people who had offered hadn’t cooked yet, so I felt it really came from me. I guess you have to watch what you think.

Eli (again)

During one treatment, after spending a weekend in Iowa City, Janet drove home with Eli, leaving me at the hospital with Jefren, rather than drive Eli home as I usually did. It was around 7:30 or so in the evening when they got in the car to go home. Janet started chatting with Eli. He listened for a minute or two, then interrupted.

“Excuse me, Mom, but this is when I usually go to sleep.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Janet said. “I didn’t know.”

Eli put back his seat, curled up, and went to sleep. Janet drove home, the radio playing quietly, while Eli slept.

The worst side effects

The first treatment in Jefren’s five-week cycle always destroyed him physically. A week or so after that treatment, Jefren always ended up back at the hospital as an emergency admittance.

In March, it did more than destroy him physically. In March, after seven months of ordeals, it destroyed him emotionally, too. He gave up.

As usual, he had been okay during the treatment. But five days after he came home, his neutrophils count dropped to 16% (of his white blood cell count). This brought his level down below acceptable. Oncology told us to start his G-CSF shots. We did, that day, but after three days of them, his Thursday blood work showed his white blood cell count was zero, and his neutrophils count was one.

When Gwen called to give us the results, she suggested coming in for a blood transfusion. A unit would take 2 hours. It was already past 1:00 p.m., so we looked into getting it done at the hospital here in Fairfield. It would have cost us hundreds of dollars, though, which state papers wouldn’t cover here. So Janet took Jefren to Iowa City where he was covered.

He got two units of blood at two hours apiece, plus the initial bloodwork to make sure he was getting the right type of blood. They were more than five hours at the hospital and got home past ten o’clock that night.

The next day, Friday, Jefren had a temperature. Janet took him to the Iowa City hospital, he was admitted, and got two more units of blood.

The next day, Saturday, they gave him another unit of blood, this time hemoglobin.

That night his blood pressure plummeted. It stayed low long enough for them to discuss putting him in intensive care though it never happened. Later, everyone concluded the blood pressure drop was from changing the cuff they wrap around his arm to a larger size. But no one knew it then.

Jefren gives up

On Saturday, I realized Jefren just gave up. He was in the hospital in Iowa City and I was in Fairfield. But I knew it, more than if he told me. He just figured he’d gone through so much, and now this, and he didn’t need it anymore.

More than anything, I realized that if he went through this treatment again, he wouldn’t make it. The “cure” was killing him.

I wasn’t even sure how many more treatments of any kind he could take. I knew something had to be done, and it had to be done soon to save his psychology. I also knew he didn’t need any more chemotherapy to kill any remaining cancer, both intuitively (using God-Self), and logically: after ten weeks of treatment, more than 95% of the cancer cells in the tumor were dead. After twelve more weeks, it seemed unlikely the other 5% survived.

Amy agreed.

“This can’t be doing him any good,” she pointed out.

She recommended I make an appointment with Dr. Walton, “He’s been away from Jefren’s case for too long, and it’s time he was brought back in,” she told me.

She also recommended a prayer: that the doctors, nurses, and whoever needed to would ‘hear and act on’ what I had to say.

When I asked when I should make the appointment, she said, “This week. Jefren needs to know something is being done to help him right away.”

I called the hospital and spoke with Dr. Walton’s secretary. She was a little surprised I wanted to see Dr. Walton privately. I didn’t want Jefren there, because his reactions and feelings to the possibility of no more chemo would get stirred up during the discussion, whatever the outcome. Janet wasn’t sure what she thought about stopping his chemo, and it didn’t seem wise to have her undecided vibes in there with us. That’s what happened when Dr. Gladstone brought up amputation.

Amy told me to talk to him —“you know how”— so Dr. Walton would hear.

And do the right thing for Jefren.

© David Adelson. All rights reserved.