It was very painful to watch Lan Yin being 'clerked in'. This is the procedure where the nurse questions the parents and attempts to start to explain the disease and its treatment.
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This was déjà vu and brought back memories of our own first days at the hospital. It was also particularly difficult because Lan Yin had the same form of leukaemia which Max had had three years previously. This is a difficult disease to treat. Over a period of a couple of days the doctors and nurses tried to explain the illness to Lan Yin's parents. Lan Yin's father was particularly devastated. He watched the other parents and stared endlessly into the distance desperately trying to reconcile his previous memories with the current desecration of his daughter.
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Lan Yin's mother wanted to know what she had done wrong. Was it the food?, was it her fault? It is very common for parents to immediately assume the guilt for their child's illness. I tried to explain that she could not assume the blame, and that no-one really knew the reasons for the disease. It helped that we had been through this type of cancer before, but not that we were back. There was also a language problem because she could not understand much of what I said, and likewise with my understanding of her replies. I felt enormous sympathy for the foreign parents in the Unit. Often their English was non existent. They were dealing with a problem which is hard to grasp and understand even as an English speaker. They were also in a foreign country with a foreign culture and a long way from home, family and friends. In many cases they were in the Unit as a last resort. The local hospitals had been unable to help and they came to the Royal Marsden Hospital because of its reputation with dealing with some of the most difficult cases of childhood cancer.
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A number of months later, after both Max's and Lan Yin's treatments were completed, we heard that she was due to visit the hospital on the same day as Max. Max spent his saved pocket money on a silver locket and a bunch of flowers for Lan Yin. A couple of days before he was due to see her again Max said to me 'Daddy, I haven't been able to sleep for the last few nights, I'm just so excited and nervous about seeing Lan Yin'. We felt we were privileged to see Max with his first true love. This was especially poignant given that Max was terminally ill.
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Although he had started to walk after the cancer had invaded spine, his mobility was severely limited. The chemotherapy stopped further crumbling of his vertebrae but the existing damage and the other effects of the chemotherapy meant that Max could not walk for any distance. He could make his way around our house and did so admirably, but there was no question of him walking into town. The hospital recommended a wheelchair and that he be declared disabled so that we could get easy parking if we wanted to go anywhere.
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