I wrote this back in late May:

Here I am, sitting at Starbucks on a treatment day. He’s actually having a port put in today, so it’s a much longer procedure than a usual treatment day. I had thought about bringing running clothes and running along the lake while he was in surgery, but it’s raining and 50 degrees, which just seemed miserable to do to myself without the ability to shower afterwards. So I might not get a run in today. We’ll see if I manage to stay calm about that. 

I had to literally and bodily place my son in the hands of a doctor today. They gave him a mild sedative but needed to take him into the OR awake, meaning I couldn’t be with him while they got him fully sedated. In the moment, it was just what needed to be done, but looking back on it, it seems like a significant analogy for my level of trust in these doctors and this hospital. During his treatments, when he’s awake, I can distract him and comfort him and just BE there. Plus I can see what they’re doing and ask questions in real time as things are happening. But the trust is still there because I have no real idea what the drugs are doing once they’re inside his body. Being next to him gives me an illusion of control, but I take their word that the drugs are doing what they say they’re doing. Now, he’s in surgery, and I am actually out of the building. The illusion is stripped away, which feels heavier. Reality can be harder to accept.

But here’s the thing. As parents, we convince ourselves we have way more control than we ever actually do. My younger son is currently 2 and a half and has cancer, so this might be a little early for the illusion to be pulled from my eyes, but my older son is almost 6 and just finished kindergarten. Our influence with him is already obviously waning. He likes his own shows and music. He wants to play his own sports and make up his own games. He wants us there exactly and precisely when he needs us, and the rest of the time, he doesn’t. I hover around in the background, trying to be needed and desperately trying to give him as much attention as his younger brother is getting because of this illness, but CONTROL is not something I can say I have over him anymore. Maybe I still have some influence, but that’s it. Obviously there’s a difference because my older son’s control is now in his own hands, where with our younger son, we place some of the control we still have in the hands of doctors. 

But the analogy still stands. We try so hard to tell kids what to do and exert some control over them in whatever way we can, since they are little pieces of our hearts and souls running around out there in the world. Little by little, they subsume the pieces of us they want to keep and reject the rest as they become their own people. And we just hope our best was enough.