Sweet Sixteen

My youngest son almost died one day over a decade ago. First, he woke up with a bad headache, and the next day he was seeing double, his right eye turned inward. In the several hours that followed, we went from our camp site (we were on vacation in beautiful Grand Teton National Park) to an eye doctor, to an emergency room, and finally onto a plane that would take us to Denver Children's Hospital and a neurosurgeon who could begin to solve the problem we had discovered. He had a brain tumor the size of a large marble growing out of his cerebellum. Before we left the ground in Jackson to get on our way, one of the worst seconds of my life occurred. The nurse accompanying us on the flight rubbed his breast bone. Hard. And he did not respond. He was unconscious.
At that moment I realized that he could die. My unstoppable 5 year old could be stopped. In a moment. That it could happen just like that. Blink and your world is a different place. Thankfully, the medicine they gave him in the emergency room to decrease the swelling of his brain kicked in mid-flight, and by the time we were in the hospital, he was arousable.
But I have never forgotten that moment, the one where I realized just how serious the situation we were in was. I met many wonderful health care providers over the 18 months that followed my son's diagnosis, starting with Dr. James Little, the pediatrician who initially diagnosed him in Jackson. I was profoundly sad to need them, and eternally grateful for what they provided. One such man was Fred Epstein, a pediatric neurosurgeon who tirelessly provided information to families like mine who were desperately seeking answers and options for their children. He wrote a book about what he had learned about courage and character from his patients and he entitled it "If I Get to Five". He had a patient who quite matter-of-factly discussed her life in the face of uncertainty. She continued to make plans, all the while acknowledging that she might not get to be five years old. Four might be the end of her road. Well, today is the birthday of my very own cancer survivor, and I wake up thinking "Ethan gets to sixteen!"
I learned the hard way. Or one of the hard ways. There are no guarantees.
I try to rejoice in what we have, rather than dwell on what we have lost. Today that is working for me.