Thomas and his friends

Muur TV

Since it is school holidays I decided to take the kids to the movies today. Provided that they were very very very good. So right now we are waiting for Alvin and the Chipmunks 3 to start.

This is Boeta with his large popcorn right after refusing to share with me (I bought 2 large ones for them, thinking I would get some). The little miser smilingly but firmly informed me that I couldn’t have any since he would have no problem finishing all of it. The box is the same size as he is…… The scary thing? The way he’s been eating lately he may just manage it.

23 December 2011

Two days before Christmas.  Three years since Woutertjie was admitted to hospital the first time.  I’ve been having a very tough day.  I don’t really know why.  It is just another day.  For a while I’ve been feeling like an oncology fraud.  We’ve walked the walk, yes, but we are past all of that now, aren’t we?  And then a day like today happens and I’m more brittle than a fresh Flake.

I don’t have much to say so I’m going to go to bed now.  Tomorrow it will be three years since diagnosis.  I hope it will be a better day than today.  Strangely, last year didn’t hit me as hard.  Time is supposed to heal.  Go figure.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Anyone care to guess where Carien is from?

It is purely grace that is it now school holidays here.  I just could not cope with one more week of rushing to school and back.

Last week I was trying to hurry the kids up, trying to get into the car on time to make it to school on time.  We live quite a way from the kids’ school and if we run late we turn up at school very late.  So there I was, off to get dressed after packing the kids’ lunchboxes and making their cooldrinks.  The rule is that I make everything, but that they have to pack it into their bags themselves and carry the bags to the car.  They have to do something.

Carien, meanwhile, was changing into her 14th set of clothes, adding jewelry, hair accessories, changing shoes, adding blue eye shadow and finishing the whole look with a ballet skirt.

And the time was ticking and tocking by.

Rushing by in the other direction I saw Carien still hadn’t packed her stuff.

Me:  Carien!  Pak jou kosblik!  Pak jou koeldrank!  Move, move, move!

Carien:  (teenager cheeky voice)  Ja, ja, raak net rustig!

I’m not sure where we got her from.  When your 4 year old stands with her back to you, hands on her hips, mumbling, before she starts stuffing her things into her bag while mumbling some more, you start believing that the teenage years are going to be a breeze compared to the f….erocious? fours……

It’s been a rough couple of weeks

That typical end-of-the-year rush.  Except that I am sure it is worse this year.  Like I am sure it is worse every year.  But this year it is worse that ever.  I am sure!

I am a SAHM.  A stay at home mom.  But most days I leave the house at 07:30 to take the kids to school and return at 18:00 to pick them up at my mom’s house.  I don’t know what I would’ve done if my mom wasn’t around to do help with taxi duties.  And I can honestly say that I don’t spend my days wasting time.  I am busier than I’ve ever been when I was doing a real job.  My mom of all people came to my defense the other day, reminding me that I’m not a real SAHM, since I do some part-time work as well and some community work on the side.  And my mom is a hard taskmaster.  If she feels that I deserve some leniency I think I should start cutting myself some slack.  Easier said than done though.  I’m not very forgiving towards myself.

It is one of those weird things about myself that I am quite aware of.  I am utterly forgiving of others.  I empathise with their problems.  I expect that other people will have days that they feel down and will want a shoulder (mine) to lean on.  And I am ready to provide that shoulder free of charge, with no strings attached and with confidentiality guaranteed.

At the same time I expect the exact opposite of myself.  I need to be self-contained at all times.  If I do crack up, I do it on my own, rebuild the fortress and then rejoin the world.  There are some people who have the unwelcome knack of knowing when my defenses are down.  Deirdre being one of them.  When she suspects that something is up, it usually is. Deirdre is cool like that.

Back to the point.  Now to tackle the last few weeks of this year.  Wish me luck.  December is promising to be a challenging month.

Check-up update

Before I never get around to tell you – last week Woutertjie went for his routine check-up.  He is now two and a half years in remission.  Thank you, Merciful God.

On Thursday morning (17 November) before school I told Boeta that we were going to go to the hospital after school to have photos taken of his tummy.  He only had to get a sonar – nothing major.  He is cool with sonars and understands what they do and show.  I thought he would say “ok” and that would be it.  Instead he asked what details.  So it became a long drawn out conversation and explanation and I just couldn’t understand why he was so hesitant.

S:  ”Liefie, ons gaan net hospitaal toe, dan gaan die tannies ‘n foto neem van jou magie.”

W:  ”En wat gaan hulle sê van my magie?”

S:  ”Hulle gaan sê jou magie lyk pragtig.  En dan gaan ons môre na tannie Stina toe en dan gaan ons vir haar ook die mooi foto’s wys.”

W:  (laaaaaang stilte)  ”Maar wat gaan hulle sê…?”

S:  ”Sê van wat?”

W:  ”As my magie nie mooi is nie?  As daar weer ‘n krokkenoster is?”

At that moment I kept my pose and coolly told him that obviously his tummy was going to be the prettiest thing they’ve ever seen in their lives.  And that obviously there was nothing in there that shouldn’t be in there.  And then he asked what “tannie Stina” (Cristina Stefan, our oncologist) would say if his tummy wasn’t perfect and I had to tell him that it would be no problem and she would simply say “hallo Wouter” in her Romanian accent and give him medicine through a “pypie” and everything would be fine.

I’ve never been scanxious* since Woutertjie went into remission (16 March 2009) but suddenly everything just hit me.  Wouter and I looked at each other and didn’t speak.  I took the kids to school, drove to my mom’s house and then cried on her shoulder.  Because no child of 6 should know of cancer and certainly know child should scare himself out of his early morning appetite because he knows that cancer could come back.  I didn’t know he knew.

I preferred not knowing that he knew.

Either way.  After school we went to Panorama MediClinic, our usual hospital.  We walked into the radiologists’ rooms and were surrounded by staff coming to greet us.  It felt good to be that loved and remembered and to have so many people admire how far Woutertjie had come.  And he simply loved the attention.

Comparing this sonar to his first (23 December 2008) and second (ECHO 5 January 2009) I can hardly belief it is the same child.  He was extremely wary those times.  Now he got dressed in the hospital gown (with his candy striped underwear sticking out at the back for the world to see but he didn’t know so it didn’t count), hopped onto the bed and immediately started interrogating the technician.  She wasn’t about to use too hot or too cold gel on him.  Nuh uh.  Not happening!  :-D

He obliged every whim of the radiographist, turning this way and that, sticking his tummy out, pulling it in, without any resistance.  He has grown up a lot since his last scans and sonars (the last sonar was in Feb 2011?).  He is suddenly a boy and not a toddler.

I explained to the radiographist that Boeta understood what was going on and that he needed to know what was going on in his tummy so after finishing and finding everything in tip top condition she told him that he did, indeed, have a beautiful tummy.  My poor child visibly deflated as the stress left him.  He was so relieved.  And again, he is 6 years old.  :-(

I could see that he wasn’t “done” though.  Something was still up.  So I asked if he wanted to pray to thank Jesus that he was healthy.  Immediately he clasped his hands together and started praying.  But unlike his usual evening prayers he used the biggest words he could think off.  He had big things to be grateful for.

“Vader … in die hemel … dankbaar … God.”

After that he had to get a chest X-ray which he also aced.  He walked into that room and assumed the position in front of the box before the woman even showed him where to go.  She was a bit confused….;-)  Maybe someone took pity on her afterwards and told her who Boeta is.  A local.  A celeb.  An old hand.

And blessed.

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*Scanxious – The feeling of dread leading up to a scan.  Well documented and often discussion phenomenon in the oncology world and also among the pregnant, where you suddenly have scary thoughts about your baby’s health in the days leading up to a sonar.

Under construction

Is anyone out there?  Does anyone still care about us?  I have no idea if there are any readers left.  If you read this, please pop me a comment.  Wordpress logs the views on the site, but that includes spam.

As you know, it has been more than 2 months since my last post.  It is painful for me to visit the blog.  It brings back memories that  I thought I’ve dealt with but still bites me.  Hard.

I had two options:

1.  ”Close” Krokkenoster and stop blogging altogether or alternatively start a new blog

2.  Revamp the blog and try to make it a “life after” blog instead of a “living with” blog.

I can’t face the first option.  Effectively writing off everything isn’t an option either, so I chose to go with the second.  I removed the picture of Woutertjie from the banner at the top of the page – looking at it hit me in the heart every time.  We are going for a family photo shoot soon.  After that I’ll put a new picture up.  A happy one with all of us.

And I am going to write about our lives now.  Some days it will be boring, some days it will be funny, some days it will be about the oncology families I spend a lot of time with.  But it will be about our lives NOW.

We fought the battle.

We won.

Our story deserves to continue being told.

Bugz Playpark

Carien and I went to Bugz today.  It is a playpark / entertainment area / party venue close to us.  A school friend of her’s had her birthday party there.  It was the first time that we were there since 13 December 2008.  1o days before Woutertjie was diagnosed.  I barely managed to breathe as the two of us walked in.

It was in the same indoor area that we were when Woutertjie was nauseous the very first time.  He didn’t actually vomit.  I ran with him to the bathrooms (past the food stalls on the left, up the ramp, zig-zag-ing through the jumping castles, left into the corridor, left into the bathroom, far-right cubicle), where he was heaving but nothing more.  And I scolded him.  Because he was miserable and moody and ungrateful and difficult the whole day until then and it was enough.  So I told him to either vomit or stop being silly.

10 days later he was in hospital with a drip in his arm.

1 day after that we heard he had cancer.

The day after that, on Christmas day, we rushed him to hospital – barely responsive with fever – where he stayed until New Year’s.

A week after that he started with chemo and vomited daily.

I am so glad today wasn’t 13 December 2008.

Said and done

So this morning Carien and I took Woutertjie to El Shaddai for his school visit.  The idea was that he would spend a full school day with the kids that will be in his class next year.  See how he fits in, see how he manages, see how it goes.

Turns out we got to school, he met the teacher, he forgot all about me.  And that is the short of it.

The long is a bit longer.

We still got to school and he still met the teacher.  There were two more children who are joining the current Grade R class for Grade 1 next year.  The three of them walked into the class where Woutertjie immediately cuddled up to the teacher while he checked out the rest of the kids.  But please don’t think he cuddled and huddled, trying to hide from the crowd.  Oh no.  He cuddled, confident of the teacher’s devotion (obviously she would adore him – he had no doubt. ) while presenting himself for the rest of the class’s approval.  This child is so confident.

Once he linked up with the teacher I was old news.  I had to call to him and signal a thumbs up;  he responded with a over dramatised thumbs up and promptly forgot about me again.  No worry about when or where I was going to pick him up.  That was detail and he had other things to worry about.  Like making a train out of cardboard and drawing a very very good Thomas the Tank Engine.

Carien meanwhile had a fabulous day (as usual) at her school.  After picking her up at 12:00 we had a lot of time before Wouter finished, so we went and bought lollipops for them.  It was Carien’s idea and she picked one for each of them and helped to pay.  It was very sweet.  She really missed having Woutertjie around at Klein Phisantekraal, even though they barely see each other during the school day.  Just the thought of having him close makes her feel all happy and clappy.

Woutertjie was so tired after this day.  He had a nap until 17:30 this afternoon and then I had to wake him up.  He was bummed!  He told me a little bit about his day but at one stage told me to stop asking.  Such a man.  *rolling eyes*

Groot skool

Tomorrow Boeta is going to “visit” the school he will be going to next year.  He is currently in Grade R, which is like a preparatory grade before “real” school starts.  But next year he will be in Grade 1 in El Shaddai Christian School and tomorrow will be a kind of school readiness assessment.  He will join the Grade R class of El Shaddai (Wouter and Carien are in Klein Phisantekraal Preprimary this year) for the day and then join them next year.  He is so excited.  He is like a little kid …  ;-)  He has been counting days and telling everyone about the wonderful adventure awaiting him.

My little boy is growing up way too soon.