The Playbook

As teachers and coaches, my husband and I are planners by nature. We are competitive, winning and a degree of success is a driving factor in our daily lives, it always has been because that is all we know. He and I both started our lives of competing when we were in elementary school, so I don’t think quitting has ever even been an option for any of the challenges we have experienced over the last twenty-plus years together either on the court or pitch or in our marriage. Don’t get me wrong we do not have all of our-ish together, I am not saying that at all. There have been a number of times we have wanted to throw in the towel or forfeit, maybe not even show up to the “game” but we didn’t, we couldn’t.

While I personally don’t know enough about soccer, to be a state-contending coach I have heard CaShan and his best friend enough to know soccer requires a high level of planning and strategy, although I still can’t see it. I know for sure football prepares hours on end 7 days a week for their opponents; if you are a football wife you know I am not exaggerating. And our girls’ basketball team has a playbook that the head coach put together for the team to analyze to help them prepare for games. The point I am trying to make is that playbooks have a significant purpose in the success a team will achieve. One definitive function is to ensure the entire program is on the same page on how we expect them to defend and attack in a variety of situations. The team has to work collectively in this manner and if just one of the players doesn’t know or cannot remember strategy, that will more than likely provide the other team with an opportunity to score against you. Another objective of the playbook is in helping to break down plays and give the team a way to mentally prepare themselves for different schemes. Every sport, every coach’s playbook is not required to look the same. Different sports have different specifications, different coaches have different coaching philosophies, but in the end, the goal is to win.

At this very moment Ca Shan and I are unsettled because WE DON’T HAVE A PLAYBOOK! We have doctors-great doctors, experts in their field including oncologists, urologists, we have dieticians, nurses, radiologists, a nationwide network of authorities on Wilms tumors, and an actual team that focuses solely on Khloe’s pain level. We have been given a plethora of paperwork that discloses information regarding the medications and treatments, the side effects we should expect, and still, all of this is not what we call a playbook. It’s more like one of those fill-in-the-word blank mad lib stories I remember doing when I was ten. There is a blueprint, a layout, a rough draft. There is stuff there, all of this stuff but we have to use our own know-how, our own judgment, our own intelligence, and our own experience to fill in those blanks. And as we gradually attempt to piece together our own version of a playbook for what to do, what to expect when your child is diagnosed with cancer, we realize that there are so many elements of this that are just out of our control. Nevertheless, all of “this” extends beyond the bounds of medical expertise and paperwork. No matter what the data reveals to us, no matter how many pieces of paper disclose side effects and benefits, no matter how accomplished our cancer team is, Ca Shan and I have so many more elements to sort out. In order to keep our jobs, we are afforded 12 weeks of Family Medical Leave. Twelve weeks sounds like a lifetime until you are dropped off on the corner of 42 weeks of chemotherapy and please don’t run a fever. Normally, if my 15-year-old daughter is sick with a fever I can leave her in bed for the day and check on her via text and Facetime throughout the day. Not now. Now, if she runs a fever at all we have to take her immediately to the emergency room, which will be followed by who knows how many nights on the 5th floor of Cook Children’s Hospital. And all of this, none of these things are as bad as what Khloe is going through.

To put things in perspective, our family, Khloe especially, is one month into this actual living hell and we have more questions than answers, more confusion than certainty and we have only statistics not promises with at least 42 weeks to go……………………