A body in pain

Since last post, Saskia has hardly been out of hospital. After she was finally able to get home, she was so weak and couldn't fight a simple infection as a common cold. Monday 30 September she was admited again into hospital with a high fever. Although the fever went down gradually, the oxygen levels in her blood were very low, so she had to be frequently on aditional oxygen supply. For Saskia there was nothing worse which could happen to her: being confined to a small hospital room during the school holidays. And although we can try to entertain her with movies, games, books, karaoke, etc, if you're not allowed to leave the hospital, everything just looks grim. But we are so proud of her as she was never realy too upset for too long. She always managed to pick herself up and do something to entertain herself.
Last monday (7 October) we got the good news that she was all clear to go home, but......there was still the stemcell harvesting to be done. The 7th chemo treatment will be a treatment targeting her bonemarrow and as a result will wipe it out. Without bone marrow, the body is unable to make blood. In order to overcome this, doctors can now extract so-called stem cells from the blood, keep it in the fridge and re-inject it when the body needs it. The best time to take these stem cells, is from blood which is newly created by the bone marrow, which is usually 2 weeks after the initial chemo treatment.
Saskia was allowed home on Monday and had to be back on Tuesday early morning for an operation to receive another line. The portline which she has is not large enough to extract blood in a continuous flow and as such a line is inserted in one of the larger veins in her right leg. The lines are then connected to this hi-tech centrifugal machine. The blood now flows through this machine, the stemcells are being extracted and the rest of the blood is pumped back into the body. This procedure took about 4 hours and with a little bit of luck, there are sufficient quantities of stem cells extracted so that Saskia does not have to do it again today.
This all sounds realy simple and relative easy, were it not that our own child is actually connected to three or four machines, with tubes, wires and electrodes connected to every part of her young body, with tears in her eyes and crying that it all hurts so much. It is one of the most devastating scenes which we can face as parents and one that we cannot prepare for. We can talk about physical and emotional pain, we can try to prepare for how we will react to it and we can try to find meaning in it. But when it actually happens it exceeds all expectation and any form of preparation falls short. It is heartwrenching to see your own child being so sick, going through so many painful procedures, hooked up to so many machines and getting a drugstore full of prescription drugs. There is something so wrong with this scenario. And there are no answers. Even the bible falls short of a direct answer. God never gave Job an answer as to why he had to suffer and even Jesus cried out on the cross "Why have you forsaken me?". How can we keep faith if even God's own son struggled with the same question as we do? It is because of that: even God's own son struggled with the same question as we do. Although all this pain does not make sense, faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse. We know that one day, it will all make sense. And that is what we as a family hold on to.