The day of Lachlan’s second birthday, February 17, 2011, he woke with fever.  He was battling a virus that was passed through our house.  A nasty one.  Just two days earlier he was on his bike charging through the neighborhood….Look out world!  That morning we did our usual routine….I got him out of bed, held and rocked him for a while singing happy birthday to him, then he wanted down to begin his daily rampage of the house.  I sat him down, he slid off the big chair as always, and when his legs touched the floor he slowly went all the way down to his bottom.  When I picked him up I noticed that his head was tilted slightly to the right. I asked him if he could straighten his head and he seemed very frustrated.  Of course my thought was that it was the fever.  I called his doctor and they had a three hour wait, so I took him to Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital ER.  After a long wait we were finally seen by a female doctor.  I thought they would give us an antibiotic or something, and send us home.  She looked him over, ordered some tests, and admitted us to the hospital.  What? We’re staying?  She said that sometimes a virus can present in the brain.  An MRI in the morning would let us know.  She was clinical, concise, a busy doctor; but, when she left the room she gave me a strange smile.  She had seen this before.  She knew.

The MRI was performed the next morning.  Early.  We were scheduled for 1 and 1/2 hours.  It took 2 and 1/2 hours.  The nurses were all making excuses about why he wasn’t out yet.  My intuition knew it wasn’t good.  Hours later, back in the room, we waited for an answer.  There were several of us packed into his tiny little hospital room that day.  I was holding him when the messenger arrived.  I still don’t know who she was.  A junior doctor or physician assistant?  As we all held our breath, she began;  blah blah blah ….”well, we didn’t find a virus.  But we did find a tumor.” blah blah blah.  She was so matter-of-fact about it that it seemed like a really bad joke.  I was waiting for her to laugh and say ‘Just kidding! He’s fine. Take him home.’  But nothing came.  Silence. The world stopped.  My hearing muffled.  I felt dizzy.  My vision yellowed.  I looked down at my baby in my arms.  What?  I think I looked at my sister and asked her what the messenger had just said.  Did she just tell me that my baby has a brain tumor?!?

Not long after, little bitty doctor with a southern accent,  Dr. Boydston, showed us Lachlan’s scan.  He pointed out the tumor and said we had caught it early.  It didn’t appear to be on the brainstem, which was great news.  He would be removing it in the morning.  Excuse me?  You are going to perform brain surgery on my son in the morning? Wait a minute.  Can I catch my breath?  He ordered a CT Scan to see if it the tumor had any calcification and to help him map out a plan of attack, surgically.  After the scan he came in the room with a huge smile and said, “This might change things folks.”  It appeared that the ‘tumor’ was bleeding which led him to believe that it was likely not a tumor but rather a cavernous angioma or arterio-venous malformation.  These options would still require surgery, but were not as nasty as the possibilities that come with a tumor.  We were sent home on a steroid and told to come back in one week for another scan.  He didn’t want to operate with it actively bleeding.  After one week they decided to wait another week to do the scan.  I questioned profusely.  They felt safe waiting.  The next week we went back for another MRI.  We didn’t wait long when Dr. Boydston came in looking rather distressed.  “It has grown,” he said, “and we’re gonna operate in the morning.”