Memories of Max - A Father's Story

Chapter 8 - Allan

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“Jamie's leukaemia is back. They can't treat him anymore. There's nothing more to be done. He doesn’t know. We're back so that they can tell him. I just don’t believe it. He looks so well.”

I was totally devastated. I’d watched her child running around the unit only a week earlier. He had looked better than at any time during his long and difficult treatment. I told her to call us if there was anything we could do. It seemed so inadequate so I held her hand and I was close to tears but didn't know what else to do. Such helplessness.

She left Outpatients and Max and I waited for his results. Max’s best friend appeared with his Mum and a family friend. They had been waiting for hours for a scan but the machine had broken down. I said that this must be the last straw. The mother got up and walked off in tears. I turned questioningly towards her friend who dropped the bombshell that David's father had had a heart attack the previous night.

These two incidents left me devastated. I wanted to just walk out on it all. I wished that I could just go to a beach and walk late at night with a fierce wind blowing and the waves crashing. Freedom. I desperately wanted to escape from being cooped up with this disease and with nowhere to go. So often I just wanted to say ‘Well that's me finished, Cancer, you win’. So easy if it actually is you, but it wasn’t. It was a family of four which had been blown apart and was drifting round our very sick child. You cannot opt out. Someone has to try and hold it all together.

Once the treatment for Max’s second cancer started, my reactions to the illness changed. I felt in control, and just accepted it. In many ways things had become a lot easier than in the intervening two and half years when we had been waiting for the return of the cancer. During that time I used to worry night and day about the horror of a relapse. Now the worst had happened the only way to survive was to live with it and try and give as much love and support as possible. I stopped thinking about Max's possible death because I just could not comprehend it.

My reaction to his illness developed into a ‘peace’, an internal quietness. It was usually only fractured when I started to explain our situation to others. At times like these I found myself reflecting on our rather bleak situation. I stopped explaining.

About two months after Max’s second diagnosis my apparent control was shattered. I was watching television, alone, late at night and a funeral scene appeared. I fell apart and sobbed and sobbed. Over and over I cried out “I don't want him to die.” It was a frightening experience. Where had all this come from? I had no inkling that all these simmering emotions lay beneath the surface. I was just not prepared. I learnt that you are never prepared. This was just a small release of the pain which was being stored for later.

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