I Don’t Like to Say the “C” Word (Part 2)

People were very helpful at this point, suggesting that it could be a ganglion cyst, or a “fatty tumor”, or even swelling due to repetitive motion (Nick is always on the computer).

The MRI was inconclusive. Dr. Conklin referred us to Dr. Herrick Siegel at UAB Highlands for a needle biopsy.
Dr Siegel is an orthopedic surgeon, but not a pediatric orthopedic surgeon. He was very good with Nicholas despite not specializing in pediatrics.

Dr. Siegel took yet another x-ray (he had Dr. Conklin’s x-rays and the MRI–I’m not sure what he thought another x-ray would show), and decided that he needed a surgical biopsy instead.

So we had to go, that day, and do pre-admission paperwork and blood work at the Kirklin Clinic. Two days later, March 20–Maundy Thursday, we were at the UAB North Pavilion at 5:00 AM for day surgery.

Well, not exactly at 5:00 PM. I went to the wrong parking deck. I had thirty bucks: a ten and a twenty, and I needed to exit the parking deck and go to another one. So I went down this circular ramp to the exit. I figured it the fee would be a buck or so, and I’d chalk it up to stupid tax. What I didn’t know was that the booth was not manned before 6:00. You had to pay a machine $3.00 to get out of the deck. And the machine doesn’t make change. Of course. So I had to go back up the exit ramp. I honked my horn as I went up to warn anyone who might be coming down. I found parking place and we were able to get to the North Pavilion pretty easily. There are pedestrian bridges connecting all the buildings and parking decks, so it you can read a map, you can find your way. The only problem with parking inthe wrong deck is that Day Surgery will only take patients to the 4th Avenue deck. If you park anywhere else, you have to go to the Patient Discharge area on 7th Avenue behind the Diabetes Building.

Dr. Siegel was fast. He came out after about 30 minutes and said that the pathologist was thinking sarcoma, but they had more lab work to do to be sure. I was hoping that it would be something he could just take out right then, but he couldn’t. We were out by 10:00 AM and would have been home before 11:00, except that Nick was hungry. So we ate at Milo’s.

The next day–Good Friday–I was at the University of Alabama (in Tuscaloosa) and was told over the phone that my son had a cancerous tumor–synovial sarcoma–, and we needed to go to Children’s Hospital for a CT and Bone Scan.

The bad news was that Nick has a cancerous tumor. The good news is that we are 30 minutes from a world-class pediatric oncology unit, we caught it early, and he does not have any other tumors or cancer anywhere else.

I don’t like to say that Nicholas has cancer–although he does. Most people, when they think of a person with cancer, they think of someone they have known who has died of cancer. It isn’t a pretty way to go, and to think of a child going through that is upsetting. But Nicholas isn’t dying of cancer. He has a very rare, but very treatable, type of cancer that is localized in one (relatively) small tumor in a place on his body that could not be easier to treat with radiation and resect. It’s a bad thing, but of all the bad things it could be, it is the least bad.

But the treatment won’t be easy. Or cheap. More on that later.