That’s when the Barrie mom goes upstairs and has a good cry, and then goes back downstairs and sleeps for a few hours on the couch beside his bed in the living room, before starting it all over again the next day.
“It’s great. I haven’t had to make my bed in weeks,” Wood said, pointing to the linens tucked neatly in a corner of the room.
That she’s got a sense of humour left at all is a testament to a mother’s strength.
Wood says it’s like Groundhog Day – the movie where actor Bill Murray relives the exact same day over for a year – but they probably haven’t got that long.
Wood’s 16-year-old son, Tanner Jemmett, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma – the same form of cancer Terry Fox had – in Nov. 2012.
Jemmett said it all started when he hurt his knee skateboarding.
It took months of misdiagnoses until a playful swat on the knee sent him in agony into surgery at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre. Instead of a suspected calcium build-up, the doctor found a large tumour and he was sent to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto because only a handful of doctors in Canada care for osteosarcoma patients.
Within a year, Jemmett had a prosthetic replacement knee, yet that was attacked by a C. difficile infection and had to be replaced with a stronger – almost cement-like material – in his leg.
Before long, another tumour had grown in his heart and lung but couldn’t be removed until his leg improved.
He lost most of his left lung and two-thirds of his right lung, but a new tumour in his ‘good’ leg has now spread to his abdomen and pelvic area, and a lump has grown back in his lung.
When doctors broke the news to him on April 1st he had stage four cancer and that chemotherapy might only bring on a coma, Jemmett said he told the doctors, ‘This better not be some sick April Fool’s joke,’ before he said no to the chemotherapy.
While he still has his sense of humour, the morphine catheter is a stark reminder of how much pain he suffers; he’s recently tripled his previous dosage.
“I live day by day. I try my best not to think about it, so I just live day by day,” he said quietly.
His mother, sister Britney, and friends have rallied around him now that he can’t get out of bed.
The Children’s Wish Foundation mailed a huge box to his house two weeks ago. Inside he found an Xbox, computer, monitor, speakers and games, so he can play Call of Duty online with friends and strangers alike, fighting invisible enemies with the blast of a laser.
Barbara Johnson of Candlelighters drops by with grocery cards and snacks weekly.
“He’s a wonderful guy, a lovely, lovely young man,” Johnson said.
She knows he’s receiving palliative care, and said she understands how hard it can be emotionally to have a son with cancer, as hers did, too.
And she also knows how hard hit financially families are after the diagnosis.
“You do everything you can, but down the road it affects you and it takes a long time to catch up,” she said.
A friend of Wood’s has set up a crowd-source fund called GoFundMe.com so friends and supporters can contribute to the family.
Although Wood said her employer has held her job for her, she hasn’t been able to work since last fall and bills are mounting.
Her first priority, however, is her son.
“He wants to stay home as long as possible, and we want to keep him home, too,” she said.
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