January 10, 2023
Benjamin's first chemo treatment of 2023.
Our morning started with Benjamin in an uncharacteristically bad mood. David and I glanced at each other as we buckled our seatbelts with a look that said, "This is not going to go well".
As we drove I pointed out the CN Tower and encouraged Benjamin to say happy birthday to his Great Papa as it approached in the windshield. When he did he did so in a cheerful voice and I could tell that his mood had started to shift. Maybe Papa's birthday would bring us some sort of luck today, I thought. Benjamin was a toddler when his Great Papa passed away and somehow through explaining death to him he'd decided that the CN Tower must be Heaven as it was the highest place he knew. In his mind, when people or animals pass away, they go to live in the top of the CN Tower.
By the time we arrived at SickKids, Benjamin was back to being his positive, happy self. Thankfully the Code Grey had been lifted so we were expecting a shorter appointment than we'd experienced before Christmas. Things were looking up!
To our surprise this ended up being one of the smoothest appointments we've ever had. Not necessarily in terms of wait times but moreso in terms of Benjamin's experience. It was the one of the first times that Benjamin was calm enough to allow me to film the cleaning of his port and the very first time I've been able to capture his butterfly insertion and removal and the removal of the large bandage that covers his butterfly. Not that it's about the filming but these parts of his appointments typically require both David and I to fulfil our Benjamin-designated rituals that help to keep him calm: sitting on Dad's lap while Mum holds his hand, covers his eyes and speaks softly and calmly to him. To see him beaming with pride as he watched the above video for the first time, seeing the cleaning process and the butterfly insertion and removal from another perspective was everything.
Benjamin continues to grow with confidence, empathy, compassion and kindness from this experience and while this is certainly not the journey we had hoped for to teach him, we have to look at the silver linings.