When the Bough Breaks

Matthew is a strong, developmentally disabled boy whom I adopted when he was nine months old. He was a happy soul who loved to be hugged and had the biggest smile I had ever seen. He struggled through life on many levels but pushed through each obstacle as effortlessly as a dolphin cutting through a wave. He saw life's challenges as games to be won and boy did he fight to win! My "Mattman" had to work harder than most children but he was accomplishing most of the goals set before him. 

Matthew was a soccer player for the Special Olympics in PA and was very involved with his team. They played hard and with a skill seen in main stream teams. At the age of 24, Matthew started to get flu like symptoms and was having trouble keeping up with daily

chores, soccer practice and even sleeping through the night. Multiple tests found he had Stage 3c Testicular Cancer. Many months of chemotherapy and surgeries kept Matthew and I together 24 hours a day and we helped each other through this terribly sad journey. Watching my son receive such large doses of

poison in his body to treat cancer was devastating and irrevocably broke my heart. During this time, I fractured my foot and we made a pretty pathetic looking picture when he was getting treatment and I had my foot up on a stool.

Traditional treatments were unsuccessful for Matthew so we moved to NYC for six months while he participated in a clinical trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital. I felt as if I was slowly falling out of a tree and hitting every branch on the way down. When would the branch break? Today? Next week? Not if, but when. My adult son suddenly needed his mom in a way I never thought possible. We developed a bond that to this day is so strong between us it is palpable. He was terribly weak during the two years of treatment. I had to help him walk, take a shower and

coax him to eat. It was as if he were a small child again relying on his mother to get him through the day.

As close as we were throughout his life, we found another level of love and affection sweeter than anything I have ever known. The hardest thing I ever had to do with my son was let him make his own decision about how far he wanted to go with his treatment.

How proud I was of his insightful questions to his oncology team and when he would talk about what he feared that day. As a parent all we want is for our children to be happy and healthy. My son was neither. He was scared, anxious, angry and wanted to go home. But his only hope for survival was staying in NYC and completing a very rigorous treatment with no guarantee of success. An

estimated three month stay suddenly turned into at least six months. Every day was very structured to follow the clinical trial criteria perfectly.

The first week we lived in NYC was one of the scariest things I have ever had to do. Not only did we have to find our way through the medical information and treatments but also learn how to adjust to big city sights and sounds. There were so many people everywhere we went no matter what time of the day. The noise was unbelievable and overwhelming at times but we soon learned to tune it out and get on with it. Matthew started getting very ill after his treatments and at one point had to be admitted to the ICU. Was this going to work for my son? What do I tell him when he asked me why he wasn’t getting better?

With an unknown, at that point, future for Matthew we developed a sense of peace and acceptance. We were not only physically attached but emotionally as well. One of his nurses even commented on how similar we looked which is amazing since I had adopted Matthew. That one statement gave us both a smile that lasted all day long.

On the extremely rare days, when Matthew was not receiving tests or treatments at the hospital, we would try to venture out to explore NYC. It would take an hour to go a few city blocks because Matthew was so weak, he had to stop every few steps. We dodged people and cars sometimes laughing ourselves silly and wondering how we ended up with our lives so seriously changed. We spent many hours just people watching in Manhattan, silently sitting beside each other wondering what the other was thinking. At times we would both start talking about the same subject and again laughed or cried. I loved to go to Starbuck’s and one Sunday morning I woke up to a hot cup of coffee that Matthew went down the street to get for me. I was taking care of him and he decided to take care of me that day. How those little things stand out to me as such a special time in our lives. 

Matthew is currently 4.5 years cancer free and the relationship we have is stronger and more flexible than ever before. He has lost most of his hearing due to the chemotherapy, his hair didn’t fully grow back and he gets anxious right before he has the yearly recheck with his physician. I, at times, have trouble sleeping because I think back to all that he went through. I share his anxiety of the rechecks and tests to make sure the cancer has not returned. But we gained so much from this journey that

will forever change the way we live. We appreciate all that life offers our family and at times just a look to each other says more than we could ever speak out loud. 

So, the bough didn’t actually break. It was bent and many times cracked but we didn’t fall. We may have rested on some branches longer than others because they felt too high and we didn’t have the courage to move forward. But we did move forward to the bottom of the tree. At times we moved cautiously and then suddenly we moved too fast and couldn’t catch our breath. But we moved and here we will stay. Together with each other.