Disclaimer: I had Karen help me with some research on leukemia, which is surprising enough since research is a thing I never do. So *most* of this is based on fact, but there are other things that I had to whip out my artistic license and bend to make fit in my plot. So, if it sounds good, believe it, if it doesn't, just smile and nod and move on. (Thanks to Karen for the research help!!)



Forever Young

Chapter Five

Acute lymphocyte leukemia. While being the most common form of cancer in children, it is also the most treatable. As with most diseases, early detection is the key to proper treatment. The problem is, though the doctors didn't say so, Leo's chances of a complete recovery are slim to none. Still, even when I know all this, it still hasn't set in to me that my brother is dying. My darling little Leo is dying. God.

Mom had first become concerned with Leo's health after he got a nasty cut on his ankle after he sliced it on a piece of glass on the beach. Afterwards, Mom cleaned the cut and bandaged it, but it never seemed to want to heal. So after two weeks, Mom took Leo to our family doctor, and he reassured her that nothing was wrong, the cut was already starting to heal. The cut did heal, and we thought nothing of it. Just like we thought nothing of the mysterious bruises, how Leo seemed to get more and more tired lately, his constant colds and illness…all signs that something was wrong. But none of us noticed. I myself can name several occasions where I should have said something to Mom and Dad that I thought something was up. Problem was I didn't think anything was wrong.

Finally, two months later, Dad became concerned when Leo turned down a trip to a basketball game because he was too tired. Leo would never miss a basketball game, especially a live one, unless they were building a ski lift in hell. Mom made an appointment for the next week, even keeping Leo home from school in case he had something contagious, then took him to the doctor expecting to hear that he had the flu, or at worse, mono. The doctor listen to what Mom had to say ordered x-rays. The doctor took one look at the X-rays and was almost a hundred percent sure that Leo had leukemia.

That first night, after I got back from dropping Felicia off, I was in a daze. Leo didn't have leukemia. Doctors were idiots anyway. What does a family practice doctor know about cancer? Obviously not a whole lot because Leo did not have it. It was just a matter of him going into the hospital in the morning, getting further tests done by a specialist, and then we'd all sit around and laugh at the doctor's mistake. In fact, I wasn't concerned in the least, so I went to school as normal on Friday. What was the point in sitting around at home when there was nothing wrong with him? I kept telling myself over and over again that there was nothing wrong. So while I sat in world history learning about the second Gulf War, the diagnosis was made, acute lymphocyte leukemia, the prognosis was set, not a good one, and my whole world came crumbling down around me.

Still, even after I came home and Mom told me that Leo would be going into surgery to determine how many tumors there were I still didn't want to believe it. It wasn't Mom's quiet weeping or Dad's quiet despair that made me get it. It was walking into Leo's room and having him stare at me with his haunted brown eyes. He understood better than the rest of us. I forced myself not to cry in front of him. He didn't need to be more upset then I'm sure he already was. I sat down on his bed with him and calmly played Monopoly. We played twice that night, the second game with Dad joining us. Then after Leo had drifted off to sleep, I went into my own room, buried my face in my pillow, and cried harder than I ever had in my life.

When we, as a family, sat in the waiting room while they operated on Leo, we tried to remain optimistic. Mom seemed better, she smiled and laughed with Dad over little stories he was telling of Leo's adventures and mishaps. If she thought everything was going to be okay, then it must be. When I was little I thought Mom carried the world on her shoulders. Anything she would tell me I would take as fact with out the slightest hesitation. That day I reverted back to old habit. We had been laughing at a story about Leo bringing home a mouse he'd found on the street and how I'd reacted when Leo brought it into my room to show me when the surgeon stepped out of the operating room. His grim face said all that needed to be said. It was not only bad as bad as they had first expected, it was much worse.

It came down to a bone marrow transplant. They removed as many tumors as they could, but if they didn't replace the leukemia cells with healthy ones; they were just going to come back in a matter of time. According to the pediatric oncologist, blood relatives were the most likely to be compatible donors. Mom and Dad got tested first, and when the results came back that they were both incompatible, I thought Mom was going to be hysterical. Instead, she just sat down in one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs and stared at the ground. I couldn't decide which was worse to watch. Then they took me back in that little room to test me. I don't even remember what the test was like, what they did, or if it was painful or not. The only thing I do know is that Leo was relying on me to be a match. I sat with my parents and I prayed, and I prayed some more that I would be a match. I was all Leo had left. Most of Dad's relatives not on a speaking basis with dad or they were dead, so there wasn't much hope there. Its not like we can look to Mom's side for help. Her lineage is a joke in itself. For reasons that are beyond me, I wept the entire time we waited for results. When its came back that I also wasn't compatible, that was when I stopped crying. It wasn't that I wasn't sad, I just couldn't, physically couldn't cry anymore.

When my results came back as negative, it was the trigger that my parents needed. I didn't know it at the time, but while I went and sat with Leo, watching a kid's movie that was on TV, Mom and Dad were each on their cell phones making calls. Mom was trying to get a hold of Uncle Zack to see what he knew about any of the other X5s possibly having matching bone marrow. Dad was calling Uncle Sebastian about new treatments of leukemia that hadn't been FDA approved yet and also if it would be possible to acquire bone marrow through the black market. They were sick of sitting still and waiting for the doctors to make all the moves to save their child's life. I have to admire the way they took control of this horrible situation. I just wanted to curl up into a ball and bawl, but they were taking action. I wish I could think it was enough.