Get Well

Way
back in 2001 I got a call from my brother informing me that my 2 month
old nephew had an enlarged liver and spleen. The doctors had no idea what
was going on and we joked about the possibility that this was just evidence
that evolution was finally giving the world a better drinker but that
was mostly gallows humor to cope with the fact that there wasn’t a damned
thing we could do.

A little while later the word came back from Sloan Kettering that Andrew
had been diagnosed with a very rare form of Leukemia. The next months
were a roller coaster of hospital appointments, chemotherapy, broviak
tubes and all sorts of crap that you wouldn’t want to see an adult go
through let alone an infant. The end of the process came with a successful
bone marrow transplant.. But as anyone who has dealt with cancer (and
there are far too many of them around) can tell you that just ends the
really expensive phase of the process. What follows is a bizarre, sort
of morbid time of walking on pins and needles waiting for the 5 year
all clear mark to come around. When it eventually got close and became
a looming reality, I decided to try to find some way to express my happiness.