Full Life Circle

We waited an hour for a doctor to come and give us an official prognosis on little Brooklyn. She slept through most of it and then the rest of it, she screamed. I thought she was feeling better, but she wouldn’t stop screaming. The nurses tried a lot of different things to calm her down, but it wasn’t happening. Jon tried holding her, I tried holding her, hell, I even tried to sing to her with Jon standing less than a foot away. That was weird, I’ve never sang in front of him.

When the doctor came in, Brooklyn had just fallen back to sleep. We asked if we could speak in the hall so we wouldn’t wake her and the doctor agreed.

“Mr. Toews, Miss Banever, I am Doctor Lankim. I am a general pediatrician that is assigned to Brooklyn. We have diagnosed her with a fever and cold-like symptoms. However, we did some further analysis of her blood and I think there is something here that requires more attention. I think that it is imperative that we do a bone marrow analysis. I would never recommend this unless it was absolutely necessary because it is a painful process to draw bone marrow. Especially for such a young child. This will need to be done by our pathologlist specialist. We can definitely bring her down to meet you, but we would like to get this scheduled for this afternoon.” He was very blunt, but definitely got our alarms going. Jon and I looked at each other, especially after the mention of the bone marrow.

“So, what does that mean? What are you looking for in the bone marrow?” I ask because I have processed this faster than Jon. He has a look of thanks in his eyes as I glance over after finishing my question. He wanted to spit it out, but I was faster.

“Well, I’m going to be frank. It isn’t good, her levels look to be at the stage for leukemia. That’s why we want to do a bone marrow biopsy. But if we caught it early enough, maybe there will be options for treatment. I’m not a specialist in this field, so I can’t go into the details, but the pathologist will come down before the biopsy and you can ask her questions. Then, we will have to await the results.”

“And what if it isn’t leukemia? Then what would be the reason she has such low levels?” I continued to ask the questions, they were just flying through my mind.

“It could be so many things, we want to rule them out one at a time. Leukemia is the all-encompassing diagnosis that her symptoms all conclude to. Mr. Toews, do you have any questions? We are not sure of the specifics yet, but we will find out as soon as possible. All of her results are being rushed as we analyze.”

“No, just bring the pathologist in. I want the test done at the earliest time for the doctor.”

“Alright, well, I’ll be back with the pathologist after the results come in. Please let the nurses know if you need anything.” He shook our hands with a heavy heart and went on with his rounds of the hospital. Meanwhile, Jon and I are in complete shock. Abby is in with Brooklyn, but hasn’t really had a chance to speak to us yet because we were calming down Brooklyn earlier when she arrived. Patrick Kane is here too, but he went out to get us adults food from somewhere besides the hospital cafeteria. Patrick Sharp is watching the girls at home and won’t be joining us.

I look to Jon and he has tears in his eyes. I’m pretty sure I do too, I have really come to love this little girl and her father that it is tearing me apart with this possible diagnosis. She was fine this morning and now she could have cancer. Life changes in the blink of an eye, that’s for sure.

“What am I going to do? First her mother dies, and now my daughter has cancer. Sorry, she might have cancer. This has been a really shitty year. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

I don’t really know what to do with this side of Jon, so I just wrap him in a hug. We haven’t ever been this close, so it kind of turns me on, but it’s also a turn off because of the reason why I have to wrap him in this hug. It is all so sad. I just want to fix it and make it all better, but that isn’t happening.

“We will get through this, Jon. I’ll be here for everything, I promise. We will handle this and come out of it on the right side. She’s really important, to both of us.” He just nodded and clung to me just a little tighter.

We were out in the hall for a while, so long that Abby came out to check on us, but I waved her back into the room with Brooklyn. Then, after almost an hour of him being gone, Patrick Kane shows up and he is completely ambushed by us being in the hall like this.

“What’s going on? Is Brooklyn okay?” he nearly dropped the bags of food in order to show the concern he has for his god-daughter. I broke apart from Jon, and turned to face Pat.

“She’s okay, for now. They want to do a bone marrow biopsy to test for leukemia. We won’t know for sure about anything until they get the results for that.”

“Woah, is there anything I can do? I mean, I brought food, but what does a guy do when your best friend gets this kind of news? I have no idea.”

“Neither do we,” Jon replies as he looks at me. And to be honest, I have no idea what will happen, but even though we aren’t a couple, I know Jon and I can get through whatever happens with Brooklyn.