Max Update! March 20, 2004

March20th

Here's the latest news about Max!

Friday, Mar, 12, before coming home from the hospital, Max got another visit from his favorite football player, Shaun Alexander. This time Shaun got to meet Max in person. After a brief introduction and some small talk the two turned to a language they could both understand - Baseball. Max and I had been playing baseball in his room over the last few weeks. He’s never turned me down when I asked him if he wanted to play, no matter how tired or bad he’s felt. I gave the ball to Shaun.

It was epic watching Shaun and Max play baseball. Shaun standing at the foot of the bed pitching, Max sitting up in bed with a make shift bat. An elite, professional athlete, an 8 year old kid in a hospital bed, a ball and a bat - pitching and hitting. Two different world's in exactly the same place for a few glorious minutes. I've never seen anything more poetic or more beautiful.

It was quite an exercise moving everything out of the hospital. Max is so blessed to have so many friends and their love was manifest all over his walls, on shelves in drawers, and floating in the air! With all the balloons, games, snacks, books, posters and other accessories we'd accumulated kind of a lot of stuff - everyone was joking about it in the hospital!

Being at home has been really therapeutic. Max started walking around on his own pretty much right away. Of course he’s still pretty wobbly and we need to stay right at his side – but it’s great to see him up and around. It’s amazing to think back over how far he’s come in the last month. On Saturday the weather was great so we went outside to play, what else, baseball. We were amazed – He can barely stand up on his own, he’s using one eye – he had BRAIN SURGERY a month ago for goodness sake but somehow he can do it – take a hitting stance, take a real swing and hit the ball… HARD! pride gleaming from his face. I have no idea how it feels for a pro-ball player to hit a home run in a ML baseball game. I have to believe it doesn’t compare with the way Max felt hitting a Nerf ball with a toy bat 25 yards over the neighbor’s garage.

On Monday, Mar 15, we resumed chemo-therapy and radiation treatments. Every day seems to bring new adventures. It’s just not as simple as they say it’s going to be: Max’s screams can be heard throughout the clinic when they put in his IV for chemo meds; the IV stops working properly and needs to be re-done; blood counts are down, then up; he isn’t eating very well today; the clinic doesn’t have the anti-nausea medicine; radiation is an hour behind; chemo is an hour behind; traffic between Children’s and UW is bad. This is week 1. It’s a lot of work and it’s going to get harder.

Max went to school on Friday for class pictures and right away all his fears about people looking at him funny or feeling weird about not being able to do some of the things he used to do seemed to evaporate. The second graders were wonderful! They were all just so excited to see their friend. It’s overwhelming the love that these kids feel. For a few hours Max was just a kid in second grade again. You could see the sense of accomplishment and calm confidence wash over him. He was doing it - being a kid. He made a card for his teacher – It said “You’re the best teacher in the world, Love Max”.

He will hopefully start back at school more regularly soon.

We’re looking forward to another weekend. No hospitals, doctors, nurses, clinics, shots, tape, temperatures, stethoscopes, inane questions (except from Dad J)…

All things considered, things are going pretty well. We’ve gotten through the first week and a half of radiation/chemo therapy and so far Max seems to be handling it ok. The anti nausea medicine really seems to be working, he hasn’t lost any hair yet (but will soon), he’s still eating, although not as much, and doesn’t appear to be overly weak yet. Blood counts have been pretty good so far too.

Some friends have told us they don’t know how we’re doing it – Sometimes it doesn’t feel like we are to be honest. We’re holding things together thanks to friends and family whose love we feel every minute of the day, somehow you are always there for us. You’ve given us the confidence to feel like we can actually do this. Also through the profound love we have for Max and the joy of getting up every day to watch him and help him keep fighting and keep improving. It was a long fall, it’s going to be a long climb - we’re so thankful to all of you for holding out hands and helping to point the way.

God Bless

P.S. Attached are a few pictures we’ve taken of Max over the last few weeks.