Welcome, Phin phans!

Hey there, phans of Phin!

It's Phin's dad, Dustin, here. I'm with Phin at the hospital now. 

He's sleeping and his vitals are okay for the moment, so I thought I'd set this blog up. I hope that it will be a way to keep Phin's phamily and phriends updated on what's happening with him, and also that it might be good for me. I haven't always been the most positive person, and my mind wanders a lot under the best of circumstances. Since we began this new phase of our lives last Wednesday, my thoughts always seem to go directly to the darkest possible corners. I'm hoping that this little project will help me focus, give me a chance to feel like I'm doing something useful, and maybe help with the "staying positive" thing. 

So here's where we're at: 

Phin has leukemia. 

The diagnosis is "acute myeloid leukemia," or AML. It is not the kind of leukemia we were hoping for when they told us he had leukemia. Our doctor told us that about 500 kids are diagnosed with AML in the U.S. each year. Two of them are at this hospital right now--Phin and a kid a year younger than him. 

I just want to pause for a moment and reflect that at some point in the last couple of days we were really hoping the diagnosis would be "a different kind of leukemia." A week ago, we were preoccupied about what color couch to get.   

Phin is supposed to start treatment on Monday--the first round. It's going to involve chemotherapy and bone marrow transfusions. 

(Oh! Also, please consider getting on the bone marrow registry if you haven't yet, and if you can. Many thanks if you're already on there ready to help save the life of someone like Phin. Or maybe Phin himself.)

It's going to be a hard fight, but I can tell you this--Phin is a phighter. Our animal-loving kid is as tough as a lion and there's no way he would have made it this long living in the same house as his two older sisters if he weren't.  

Here's how we got here:

Phin before his appointment on Wednesday.

I picked up Phin early from preK for a pediatrician's appointment last Wednesday. Neesha and I had noticed some bruising on his body recently, which we thought was from low iron, and when he started losing his appetite and acting tired, we knew something was up. Normally, Phin is an insatiable snack-devouring machine who bursts into action the moment his eyes open and doesn't slow down until bedtime, but lately he'd been acting kind of sluggishly. The final indication was when he and I went to the zoo--his favorite place since he wants to be a zookeeper when he grows up--and he told me he wanted to lie down and take a nap. 

So he went to see his pediatrician on Wednesday, got a blood test, and then we went straight to the pediatric ER and then to the children's hospital, and we've been here ever since. He's still wearing his school uniform shirt from the last day he was in his class. He refuses to take it off. 

The trio reunites in the lobby.

We got the feeling the doctors knew it was leukemia the moment we arrived, but we didn't get the official diagnosis until the test results came back, days later. We spent those days wringing our hands, praying, crying, putting on a brave face, beating ourselves up, and generally falling apart. We're still doing all of those things now, each in our own unique way. It's as if Phin's sickness is a funhouse hall of mirrors in which we each see our personal emotional inclinations enlarged and distorted. Neesha said she felt incredible anger. She was furious that this is happening to our son--her anger branching out like crackling lightning in all directions, including at herself, whereas I was dashed by waves of grief, anxiety, and guilt, dragged under and away by currents of remorse and regret. It's too soon to say how the girls are faring. We only told them last night. Av has lots of questions and Obi has been walking around the house with a look on her face like she's trying to figure out how to murder Phin's leukemia in its sleep. 

A few other notes:

• Neesha and I have only told a few people at this point--some family and close friends, friends who happened to contact us just as this was all going down, and Phin's teachers. Please don't feel insulted if we didn't get this news to you with calligraphy. It's just been a crazy week.  
  
  
• It might take a while for us to respond to comments/texts/messages/calls, but we'll do our best. Like even just now, writing this post, about a dozen different medical professionals and hospital staff have come in and out; Phin got mad at me because he doesn't really understand why he has to stay at the hospital, he wanted his Momma, wanted his sisters, wanted his own bed, and didn't want any more medicine; we made up; and now he's sleeping again; and Neesh needed me to send her pics of some documents here for whatever desperate task she's currently working on. Texts and DMs were coming in the whole time all of that was happening and I was writing this. This is all to say, I'll update this as often as I can, and Neesh and I will reply to stuff as much as we can as often as we can, but it might take a while. Sometimes there's just too much other stuff happening, and sometimes we just don't have any more in us at the moment.
  
  
• And sometimes we just want to be present for Phin. Because he needs that. And because we need that, too. 
  
  
• We are 100% Team Phin. If you're on Team Phin, we're on the same team. Same. Team. We don't have time for any other kinds of bullshit here. You feel me. 
  
  
• We're already receiving an outpouring of support and generosity that humbles us and brings us to tears. By the way, I'm discovering that there are different kinds of tears like there are different kinds of rain, and the tears of gratitude for some of you all, those stream gently and sweetly like the rivulets from an afternoon shower on the windowpane of your bedroom in the house you grew up in; other tears, like the ones from existential dread, those come down round and hard like the kind that batter your car and force you to the shoulder of the highway with your flashers on. Anyway, yes. Thank you to everyone who is already on it. Thank you all so much. Right now we seem to pretty much have everything we need, but we're learning that it changes moment to moment, so if you want to help, awesome, thank you, and stand by. We'll tell you when it's go time. 

I think I'm going to leave it here for this first one. I want to try to keep these kind of short. It's a lot, I know. Thanks for reading. I'll be back with more updates on Phin soon. 

Until then, here's a clip of Phin meeting a sweet comfort dog named Bailey.