Ethan Michael’s Story
In March last year, Ethan started getting unexplained fevers. He’s always been more susceptible to fevers than any of our other children. Often we were told that there appeared to be no real reason for them and that we should just give him the usual Panado syrup to bring down the fever. This time was different though.
Between mid March and end April, we were constantly at the doctor with Ethan because of fevers. One Thursday evening at 12am, my husband and I took Ethan to the clinic because he was running a fever of 41 degrees. The doctor on call informed us that he had many glands and had all the symptoms of glandular fever. Since I was seeing Declan (3) paeditrician the next morning, I wasn’t too concerned about this and took Ethan along. I mentioned to the paediatrician what had transpired the night before and he informed me that it sounded about right, however, if Ethan did not respond to the medication I must bring him back to him.
Ethan recovered and was ok for all of one week. Our kids do swimming as an extramurual activity and it was during this time, about 10 minutes before Ethan’s swimming lesson was done, that he started crying with a pain in his tummy. This was around 620pm. By the time we got home, Ethan was running a temperature of 40degrees. Since I had suppositories left from the week before, I gave him one to bring down his temperature and informed Damascene (hubby) that I would make an immediate appointment Thursday morning with Dr Smit.
Damascene and I were planning a much needed long weekend away, only our 2nd alone since having kids 9 years ago. My brother in law was scheduled to stay with the 3 kids for the weekend. We would return Monday 4 May 2009.
I called Dr Smit and they made space for our visit. We saw him at 10am. He informed us that upon feeling Ethan’s tummy he found a large mass. It felt like an enlarged spleen, but that he would send us to the hospital to have a sonar, xrays and some bloodwork done. We were to phone him at 5pm for the results.
We went there, still not really feeling that anything major was wrong. We did the xray and sonar. The doctor performing the sonar asked Ethan questions about how he was feeling. Did it burn when he peed, etc. etc. Ethan answered yes to most of these questions, which made me realise how very independent Ethan was. He has never complained to us about any of these things.
The doctor asked if we were going to Dr Smit immediately after our visit, upon which I replied that we would be phoning him at 5pm for the results, however, we still needed to get the bloodwork done. She asked that we return to her after the bloodwork was complete.
When we returned we were informed that Ethan was scheduled for a CT scan. Dr Smit’s receptionist called me to inform me that she had booked Ethan into hospital and following the scan, we would need to go to the room. I still can’t remember what emotion it was that I felt. I felt empty and knew that for Ethan’s sake, I needed to remain calm. He was given a juice to drink and some goodies that would prepare him for the scan and we were told to return within an hour.
We went to the coffee shop. We were there about 10 minutes, when we saw Dr Smit coming toward us and he was pale… he informed us that they suspected that Ethan had a Wilms tumor. We asked what the chances of a misdiagnosis was, he said 0. He also informed us that if there is a kids cancer you want then this is it… you don’t want Neuroblastoma. There was silence.
After the hour, we went for the CT scan. Ethan was so brave throughout it all, not crying or anything when they put the drip up etc. etc. All he wanted to do was “go home to Ewan and Declan”.
This was the day that our normal changed.
