September 1st begins Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Rocky and I will probably bombard you all with yellow ribbons and terrifying statistics for the next 30 days on our personal pages and occasionally here too. To kick the month off I wanted to share Dj’s story, the long version. I am going to break it up over the next couple of days because it will be long. Dj was a normal healthy from birth, born December 31st at 11:36 pm. He had a brief stay at Dell Children’s at 3 weeks after coming into contact with RSV but other than this was perfect. Dj was breastfed until he was 13 months old and was fed mostly organic, homemade food. I found out I was pregnant with Dj’s brother Jaxen and that is when I discontinued breastfeeding. We tried to protect Dj from every danger. We trusted only a select few with his care and really tried to control every factor in his life that we could. *please know I have reviewed DJ’s exposure to just about everything in an attempt to figure out why Dj got brain cancer. There is no direct answer. Unfortunately. At about 14 months Dj started throwing up his new “cow’s milk” during the evening. It was pretty consistent. Always with milk and always at night. We took him to his pediatrician. It was ruled a cold as it was only a week or two period that this had been going on. A month later it was ruled a milk allergy. And we were instructed to stop giving milk at night. At that point the throwing up seemed to slow down. He still vomited but not as frequently. One weekend afternoon, he vomited a couple of times. We took to the urgent care. It was chalked up to a virus and we were sent home. There were more visits just like this with the same outcome. Hide sight is 20/20. Although Dj never had typical brain tumor symptoms that include vomiting in the morning, headaches, dizziness, seizures, etc , we might have detected something so extreme sooner. Sad fact is doctors are taught, When you hear hoof beats, think of horses not zebras, Dr. Theodore Woodward. On May 29th, a normal Sunday morning, we went to church like normal. The one thing that had changed was Dj was being cut off from a bottle and now only given a sippy cup at nap and bed time. A kind of big transition for him. We left church knowing that he had eaten a couple of donuts in the nursery, which we frowned upon. It was Dj’s nap time so we headed to home to let him do so. I gave him his sippy cup on the way home after he fussed a little. After a couple of sips on his cup he threw what I thought was the biggest temper tantrum ever. I even thought to myself that if this what terrible two’s hold for us then we are doomed! His screams only grew louder and harder. My husband urged me to crawl in the back and comfort him. Nothing was soothing him and his cries become unmanageable. So against all laws and good sense I took him out of his car seat as we drove home. As Rocky drove and I held him he fell asleep. Shewwww…we survived our first encounter with the sippy cup. Little did we know what was coming. I laid down on the couch with Dj and we napped. After about 2 hours and not much rustling from the little guy, I tried to wake him. He stirred seeming to be still very tired. So I let him sleep a bit longer. He woke up vomiting. We cleaned it up and concluded his little belly was having a hard time with those donuts. Dj still was tired so we let his catch a few more zzz’s. It had been about 3 hours since the car ride. He woke up once again, threw up and tried to go back to sleep. Rocky and I decided to try and give him a bath to see if it would soothe him at all. In the tub he was having a hard time holding himself up so I crawled in the tub with him. Dj normally loved bath time so when he barely made a few splashes I knew he was out of sorts. Then he started vomiting again. This time bile. I was at a loss. Do we go back to the urgent care for a virus diagnoses or do we brave the ER only to waste 5 hours and expose ourselves to who knows what during the wait? I decided to give the nurse line a call and see what they say. We went over his history and recalled the day. She said go to the ER, the CHILDREN’S ER. Ugh! The drive and the wait but we loaded him up and took him. On the drive over he was coherent, talking, asking for water although as soon as it went down it came back up. I prayed the whole way there we might find favor with a nurse who would get us in and out quickly. Little did we know what was coming. We got there and went over symptoms. Vomiting, sleeping and although coherent he was becoming lethargic. She got us back quickly and we were relieved. The ER doctor did every test he could. Lab work, ears, nose throat, down the throat, up the bottom, x-ray’s and hours later…NOTHING! He said “Before we send you home I would like to do a CT scan.” My heart sank. No one does CT’s unless they suspect abuse. I gave permission and off Rocky and DJ went to the machine. I waited in the hall because I was pregnant. The scan was quick and we were on our way back to our little room with Rocky lagging behind while he gathered out bags from the CT room. On the way back to the room the ER doctor pulled me to the nurses station and said “Mrs. Mojica, your son has intracranial bleeding, he is going to be intubated and into immediate surgery.” I contested that he had just come from the CT room and it was impossible for him to know that. Once again he looked me in the eye and said, “Your sons brain is bleeding, he is being intubated and going to surgery now. “ I fell apart. Rocky was still making his way to us but began to run when I screamed for him. I told him what I was told and we were informed we couldnt see DJ as he was getting prepped for surgery. I didnt understand. Who hurt him? How did this happen?!? An eternity later the neurosurgeon arrived and informed us that what was going on with Dj was not something that someone caused but gave us a couple of scenarios. We wouldnt have answers until he got in there and found out exactly what was going on. Dr. Spinks gave us permission to see Dj one more time before his 5 hour surgery. We walked into the ER room to see our very tiny 17 month old still semi-conscious, heavily sedated and in the midst of a lumbar puncture. They asked us to help hold him down. We said our “see you laters” after the procedure, a quick prayer and lots of love yous. We never say goodbye. NEVER. We were whisked to a private room where some family was already waiting for us. During all the commotion Rocky had put on fb Dj’s situation and our amazing family was there in an instant. As a family we were informed of what laid ahead in the coming hours. Maybe paralysis, maybe a blood transfusion, maybe life support, maybe death. Although we knew the worst case scenarios we always remained positive and we always knew Who we trusted in. So we waited.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 04:45:11 +0000
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