A year ago today, our son Ben was diagnosed with B-ALL – b-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Writing down those words still makes me cry, even though treatment has gone amazingly well, and he’s not in danger at the moment. He’s in remission, has progressed to the maintenance phase of treatment, and basically seems like a normal kid again, albeit with less hair. 

I didn’t know how to mark a year since diagnosis. He’ll still be in treatment for another year and a half, though thankfully, maintenance is much lower stress than the intense early phases. But a year since this all started doesn’t necessarily seem like something to celebrate. The time has passed, but I’m not sure what to do about it. We’re trying to just observe what’s changed in the past year, basically taking stock of how it’s gone. 

It went by really fast – that’s the first thing I note. I have few memories of the entire first month, and I think it’s better that way because that month was terrible, just in a general sense. Our poor boy was exhausted, on steroids, unpredictable, and in pain. He couldn’t walk. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever experienced first hand. But he still smiled a lot. He watched a ton of tv, I think, but I couldn’t possibly care less about that. 

The summer stretched out a little in my memory, so I remember a nice backyard neighborhood party as one of the first times I talked to people. I think I talked about cancer literally the entire time, which in retrospect was probably off-putting, but everyone was nice to me because they’re nice people. Thanks, beautiful neighbors. A few friends were also able to come visit during that time since it was easier to hang out outside. Those memories feel surreal because it’s hard to reconcile the pain I was in with the fact that I was spending time with some of my favorite people. I think I felt really confused during those visits, sort of happy and sad at the same time. I was also just not dealing with any kind of trauma yet because we were in it. Ben was in the hardest parts of treatment. 

The fall and winter were extra difficult. Maybe I had begun actually processing what was going on, so it all felt more real, but also, we had the setback of thinking he was in remission when he actually was going to need a slightly more intense course of chemo. We were scared. The word “relapse” entered our brains as a possibility for the first time, though thankfully that hasn’t come to pass (*knocking all on the wood available*). 

Now it’s spring again, and all we can do is be thankful for how far he’s come and how much we’ve all grown and changed together as a family. When I think back on this time last year, part of me remains sad that he had to go through all of this, but the bigger part of me, the part that knows there’s nowhere to go but forward, can focus on how thankful I am that he’s made it this far. We – our little family of 4 along with our extended family and close friends – are able to focus on what’s actually important in a more defined way. It’s been so perfectly outlined for us, shown to us by this set of circumstances that we never thought we’d have to go through. I love our family and friends. Do worries still come up about money and FOMO and vacations we might never take and other negative comparison-type stuff? Sure. But more often than not, I can remind myself of my true priorities and move forward with confidence earned through experience.