Memories of Max - A Father's Story

Chapter 10 - Transplant

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"Maxie, Maxie, I like your mirror. Who is the most beautiful of them all?" .

He was not given time to answer. "Me!" she shrieked with laughter and then added "But Maxie is the nicest of them all."

I played with them both for a couple of hours and had them both in stitches. We all had to leave both Lan Yin's ward and corridor because we were making too much noise. We ended up joking and laughing in Max's room.

About four days later our worst fears were realised. Max started being very sick and had a lot of pain in his legs. When I practised Kung Fu we always used to massage in the direction of the toes when someone had a leg injury. The idea was that the Chi needed to be freed and allowed to flow properly. The massaging towards the toes freed the Chi channels and freed the body of pain. I had told Max this in the past and he believed it implicitly. I had used this technique previously when he had leg pain. I massaged his leg for about an hour to try and comfort him. He said that it helped. Gradually he fell asleep and slept for six hours.

As the symptoms of the chemotherapy took their hold Max stopped talking to anyone because his mouth and tongue were gummed up with white mucous and sores. He'd seen and felt the mucous and was very upset. I talked to him and explained that while the chemotherapy was killing the tumour, it was also killing the cells which lined his mouth and tummy. He was much happier when he realised these symptoms were what the doctors expected.

During this treatment, Max's trust in the doctors was almost as important as his trust in us. He knew that we would question them and that if we were not happy then we would demand more information. If we were satisfied with the current state of treatment and the doctor's assessments then Max too was prepared to accept the situation.

The fact that Max could no longer talk made life very difficult. Our time together became a sad and sick game of charades. He would grunt and gesticulate with his hands. We were supposed to interpret these actions and mostly we got by but often it was impossible to know what he wanted.

Max became very depressed and the fact that he could not talk and tell us how he felt made matters worse. I became very frustrated that I could not reach him. In the end laughter seemed to be the only tonic. I would make jokes, play the fool, anything to get a twinge of a smile at the edge of that cracked and sore cavity which masqueraded as an excuse for a mouth. It worked. Sometimes the laughter hurt him physically, but it made his sprits soar and that was all that mattered. It was incredibly uplifting to reach into your child's depression and haul him back to some form of normality. How can you quantify achievements such as this?

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