Liam's Cancer Fight Day 2

Day 2 (Saturday Dec 7th):
Pulling into the parking lot of Primary Children's, a realization sunk in that things were serious. At the same time, I don't think we were fully aware of what to expect. We were under the impression that we were here to do surgery to remove the mass and after a few days, put the whole thing behind us.

Security was expecting us and we were quickly taken to the 4th floor. Whether it was the lack of sleep or complete denial, I found it odd that they were taking us to the "Cancer/Transplant" unit and not the surgery unit. I just thought to myself, "well, I guess that unit must be full". It was about 5:30a by the time we got to the room. There was a little crib, a small couch, and a small chair that rocked. We were told our doctors would meet with us in the morning and that the surgical team would be by later to discuss the plan. They also wanted to do another CT scan, this time of the chest area since the one from McKay was just of his lower gut. This meant NPO (no food) for Liam, who was already drained from the long day, and an IV. Natalie asked if they could put in a longer term IV and the nurse said they would probably put in a port so they could administer the chemo that way in lieu of the IV. Chemo? Wait, what? Nobody said anything about Chemo!! Assuming she was talking about generalities, it was decided that for the night an IV would be ok. The IV that was placed at McKay had already gone bad so this meant that yet another IV would need to be placed. Would we have another traumatic episode getting the IV placed? We weren't sure we could do that again. The IV team arrived and, like the pro's they are, quickly placed the new IV without any problems at all. Maybe we were in the right place after all.
At this point, we were all exhausted. Poor Liam had been through the worst of it. I sat in the chair and held little Liam in my arms, hoping he would sleep better. My neck hurt, my back was sore, and I couldn't find a way to get comfortable, but it didn't matter. I had to be strong. As a Dad and a husband, that's what I needed to be because that's what they needed at that moment. Natalie laid on the couch and did her best to find a few minutes where she could feel well enough to close her eyes. The stress, anxiety, and lack of sleep mixed with her recovery from her fever had started to take their toll.

As the sun came up, we started getting visits from the medical team. They started to explain to us that based on the labs drawn and the CT results, they anticipated the Tumor to be one of 3 types: A teratoma, which is a benign tumor that would have required surgury for removal (best case scenario), a neuroblastoma (a malignant cancer) that would require chemo, and a germ cell tumor which they said was a cousin to a teratoma but it is a more agressive growth which would require surgery and a follow up with chemo. The team was optimistic that it would be a teratoma but needed to draw more labs and wait for what the catecholamine levels were. If one of the blood tests came back elevated, it would be a good sign for a teratoma or germ cell tumor. Alternatively, increased catecholamines meant neuroblastoma. Without those results, the team couldn't be certain for sure. There was still discussion of surgery but we still didn't have a time of when that would be.
Just after that my best friend Tyler showed up to give us some support and his usual comedic relief. By about 10 or so, Natalie's parents arrived and we brought them up to speed on what was going on. Krissy (my little brother's wife) was super sweet and brought us lunch and a few clothes to change into. She had just spent the night watching our girls and had left them with my Mom in Huntsville.
During lunch I had a hard time keeping my eyes open so the staff took me to a dark room where I could take a "quick" nap. As soon as I hit the bed I passed out. A few hours later I headed back to the room, not realizing it was nearly 3:30. While I slept they did the full CT scan around 2:00 and at about 3:00 finally informed Natalie that they wouldn't be doing surgery until Monday. Finally we could feed Liam! Poor guy hadn't eaten all day.

The rest of the afternoon was much more calm and we were left to ourselves to digest what was going on. 24 hrs earlier we had rented a movie hoping for a nice quiet Friday night. Now we were in room 4417 of the Cancer Transplant Unit at Primary Children's hospital just praying for the mass to be a teratoma and not cancer. Only time would tell.
That night, Natalie and I cuddled up on the less than Twin sized couch, too exhausted to care, and too worried to want to leave Liam. We were going to be there for our #LittleLiam.