Dana + 5 = etcetera

Today is Landon’s fifth birthday.  I have known it was coming, planned as best I could.  We planned three different parties to arrive at the one that would work.  At first, we planned a normal kid shin-dig, complete with outside games and children and a Pin the X on the Pirate Map Treasure.  When he was hospitalized, my aunts planned a party for the cafeteria of the hospital, featuring gloves blown up like balloons and a round of Pin the MediPort on (a cardboard cut out of) Landon. 

Now that he is home, but with a lowered immune system, we are having a party with fewer guests and more decorations to make up the difference.  We cannot have a yard full of children walking a wooden plank across the inflatable pool.  But we can have a treasure dig, inflatable swords, eye patches, clip on earrings, and caution tape warning the land lubbers to Beware of Pirates.

Landon was eating breakfast, a chocolate-covered doughnut, when he remembered that it is his birthday.  I called out to him and he came and snuggled in my lap.  As I wished him Happy Birthday, I cried.  I wasn’t expecting to cry.  I had been preparing for the emotions of the day, or so I thought. 

I remembered the day, the one time, that I questioned whether Landon would turn five.  It was Saturday, August 2, 2008, and I sat alone with him in his huge PICU room. (When I asked why the room was so big, the nurse told me it was so there would be room for “all the equipment he might need” – Terrifying)  It struck me then that my sweet baby was in the Intensive Care Unit, a place for children who might die.  I know that the doctor had shown me statistics that gave my baby a 95-98% chance of complete recovery.  What I worried most about, at that moment, was the 100%:  each child didn’t live 95% or even 98%, they either live 100% or die 100%. 

 At that moment, with my baby attached to tubes and monitors, I watched his pitifully slow heart rate on the monitor.  He developed headaches, going from sleeping to suddenly screaming in pain within minutes.  My son was on a morphine drip, something I had never considered.  For the first time, I forced myself to consider what could happen. 

It’s how I deal with things, how I dealt with the news in the first place.  I prepare for the worst, rehearse what I’m going to say and do, so that I will be ready for anything – good or bad.  On that first long drive from the pediatrician to the oncologist, Wilson and I discussed the L-word.  We are smart people, and we had done the research.  We prepared ourselves to deal with the diagnosis.

And that evening, alone with the beeps of the monitors and the soft snores of the morphine-induced nap, I forced myself to plan it out.  I knew where I wanted him buried, what he would wear, what I would wear, who would sing what hymns, and how I would explain it to the other children.  I thought about how I would tell Mattie about her brave brother, the one that died when she was four months old. 

And I prayed that those plans were a waste of time.  I didn’t tell anyone at the time because I was surrounded by loving family members telling me to be positive, that Landon would be ok. I knew that I needed to plan, just in case, so I didn’t stop breathing altogether and just die with him. 

And a miracle happened.  He got better.  Not without another trip under anesthesia to correct the problem, but he did get better.

And now he’s five.  It has been nine months and one day since that day.  The fear lessens every day, but I don’t think it’s completely gone, or that it ever will be.  I envision him coming home for Christmas, wife and children in tow, and I’ll feel his head, take his temperature, ask how he’s feeling.  I can’t ever take his health for granted.  Or his birthday.

I know this isn’t the typical Birthday post.  Head on over to Landon’s site for a happier, more upbeat, celebration of Landon’s birthday. www.landonupdates.com