Memories of Max - A Father's Story

Chapter 8 - Allan

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I felt guilty for some time afterwards. There is always that ‘If only’. With most cancers it makes no difference. If a child has cancer and it has not spread then early or late diagnosis makes no difference. The child either has or does not have cancer. With the cancers which are aggressive and likely to spread quickly then this is not the case. Once a cancer spreads, treatment becomes more difficult. In Max's case the cancer was very aggressive and had started to metastasise into spreading cancers by the time he was treated. Once that fact became apparent, I often wondered whether our lives might have been different if I had raised the alarm. In hindsight the knowledge that Max’s second cancer would have probably been followed by the same or other cancers meant that such contemplation was meaningless.

There was another situation which still causes me to feel guilt. It was not guilt for Max’s illness, it was guilt for my reaction when another child died. I’d often think ‘There's one more gone, maybe that gives us just a little more chance of survival’. These sad thoughts have no scientific basis whatsoever. They are gut reactions, reactions like the many others that you cling to. They are those forlorn hopes which you scavenge from wherever you can to help you keep going. The death of another child with the same illness plays no part in the survival of your own. The illnesses are independent and have no relationship to those of other children. It is human nature to falsely view statistics in this way. There is this belief that only so many children can die within a given period, and the sooner that figure was reached then the less likely your child would die. This is not true.

In general I coped with the day to day events which were thrown at us but there were times where I just wanted to throw in the towel and announce that I’d had enough.

There were days where events did not seem real. On one of those days Max and I went to Outpatients for blood chemistry tests. We had to wait so Max went to the schoolroom and did some colouring. He became bored and so we returned to Outpatients.

A single mother I knew well sat down next to me with a very lost and distant look in her eyes. I was surprised to see her there because her son had just finished treatment.

“Is everything OK? Are you back in for treatment or just seeing the consultant?”

She turned to me totally distraught and with tears in her eyes.

“It's back.” she whispered.

I looked at her blankly, I didn't know what she was talking about.

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