For a month and a half after Atlas was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma, he barely moved.
He didn’t leave the hospital bed.
He didn’t leave the couch.
He didn’t play.
He didn’t really talk.
He didn’t eat.
He was there, physically, but the little boy I knew felt like he was slipping further away every day. For three weeks in May, I lived in a constant state of fear that I would never hear him say “mama” again.
That sentence is hard to write.
It sounds dark, and it is. But it’s also the truth. In those early days, I genuinely believed Atlas was dying. Not because anyone had said those exact words, but because I couldn’t comprehend what was happening or process how severe everything felt. My brain simply could not catch up to reality fast enough to protect my heart.
I had never even heard of neuroblastoma before May 8th.
On May 8th, our lives changed forever.
We were rushed to Iowa City and placed on the oncology floor with nothing but a cardigan and my phone sitting at five percent battery. No packed bag. No plan. No time to understand what we were walking into.
I was told the outlook was grim.
Scary.
That the mass was one of the largest they had ever seen.
I remember nodding, signing paperwork, listening to words that felt unreal. Biopsies. Chemotherapy. Clinical trials. Stem cell transplant. Each document slid across the table felt heavier than the last. I signed my name over and over, barely registering what I was agreeing to, only knowing that not signing was not an option.
I was a walking zombie.
All I knew was that my baby had cancer, and I had no idea how to cope with that fact.
Atlas didn’t want to eat. His body simply wouldn’t accept it. In the middle of everything, I pushed for an NG tube insertion during his biopsy because I knew, instinctively, that he needed nutrition to survive what was coming. It was one of the few decisions that felt within my control, even as everything else spun wildly out of it.
Still, I was lost.
When we finally went home three weeks later, it felt like I was bringing home a completely different child.
Everything had changed.
I woke up at 4 a.m. every day to start the first of five feeds. I learned how to rotate medications, how to manage side effects, how to keep him as comfortable as possible. I learned how to exist in a constant state of vigilance, listening for changes in his breathing, his tone, his cry.
His sister didn’t understand what had happened.
Her brother looked different. He moved differently. He wasn’t the same child she remembered. Watching her try to reconcile that loss while I was barely holding myself together was another kind of pain entirely.
We were in a new home too.
I couldn’t stay in my apartment alone anymore. As a sole parent, I knew I wouldn’t be able to work. Atlas couldn’t be anywhere without me, and I couldn’t leave him. Cancer made that decision for us without asking.
Those early weeks felt like drowning.
I grieved the life we had while trying to survive the one we were now living. I missed our normal more than I knew how to say out loud. I missed healthy Atlas. I missed the version of motherhood that didn’t involve oncology floors and medical alarms.
Now, nine months later, things look different.
The NG tube is gone.
Atlas has gained weight.
He plays nonstop.
He eats nonstop.
His laughter fills rooms again. His energy feels endless. On the outside, it might look like we’ve turned a corner, and in some ways, we have.
But cancer is never that simple.
His treatment plan didn’t go the way we hoped. His tumor hasn’t been cooperative. The mutation his neuroblastoma carries has proven itself to be aggressive and fast. We have a game plan. We have backup plans. We have contingencies layered on top of contingencies.
And I am terrified of all of it.
To say I’m jealous of parents with healthy children and relatively normal lives feels selfish, but it’s true. I miss our old life desperately. I miss not knowing how fragile everything was. I would give anything to go back and relive it, to truly relish it, to not take a single ordinary moment for granted.
Five rounds of induction chemotherapy.
Six rounds of immunotherapy.
And now two more rounds of chemotherapy again.
Nine months of cancer.
Nine months of learning medical language I never wanted to know. Nine months of good news followed by bad news. Nine months of figuring out how to cope with uncertainty while living inside it every single day. Nine months of advocating, pushing, questioning, and trusting my instincts even when my voice shook.
And still, a long journey ahead.
I don’t have answers.
I don’t have guarantees.
What I have is a little boy who is still here. Who plays. Who eats. Who laughs. Who says “mama.”
And I have learned that loving a child with cancer means learning how to live with fear without letting it consume you. It means mourning what was while fiercely protecting what still is.
Nine months in, I am still learning how to breathe in this life.
But I am breathing.
And Atlas is still fighting.
So I will too.