OUT OF THE CLEAR BLUE SKY

Two days passed with no change, then a week. The doctor suggested an ultrasound, which showed nothing, then a chest x-ray.

When the x-ray technicians refused to tell Terrie what they had found, she recalls, "I just had this feeling that something wasn't right. I had taken Marc out of school and decided I'd take him out to lunch, then go back to the radiologist's office and try again to see the x-ray.

"We were sitting in the car after lunch, about to head back, when my cell phone rings. It was the pediatrician and he says, 'You've got to listen to me really closely. This was not the result we wanted to see. Marc has tumors in his neck and his chest down to the nipple level.'

"So I get hysterical, crying in the car, this poor child sitting next to me – it's the day before his 11th birthday and we're getting this news. I couldn't even comprehend what the doctor was saying, I was so upset."

Somehow she managed to call Paul and her brother, Greg, who was working close by, and they came and drove Terrie and Marc to the Cancer Center for Kids at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, about 10 miles from Hicksville. The pediatrician had arranged for them to meet immediately with Dr. Mark Weinblatt, Winthrop's chief pediatric hematologist and oncologist.

By the time they got to Winthrop, Terrie had resolved to pull herself together. "I had always been on the other side of the fence," she says, "helping people understand what the doctor had just told them. Now I was on the other side and I told myself, 'You've got to get a grip, don't be the mother right now, be the nurse, and figure this thing out.'

"From that point on, I went into take-no-prisoners mode. I was going to do whatever I could for my boy."

Dr. Weinblatt ordered a bone marrow aspiration and it was quickly determined that Marc had Hodgkin's lymphoma. Within days, Marc had started on a regimen of chemotherapy, to be followed with radiation.

"If you're going to have a childhood cancer thrown at you, Hodgkin's is the best of the worst because it has a high cure rate," says Terrie, "and I decided that's what we were going to be grateful for."

Marc was a good patient--Terrie thinks it helped a lot that he was always kept fully informed about his condition, and understood what was going on--and he was able to complete the full course of treatment without ever being admitted to the hospital. Still, as Terrie recalls, "there was a lot of pain with the chemotherapy, a lot of trauma."

It was especially hard for Michael to watch his brother suffer. The two boys were exceptionally close.

"Michael was devastated when he heard the diagnosis, and sometimes he would cry because Marc was in such pain. But he was a great cheerleader for Marc, telling him he was a fighter, that he'd be fine."

By late May, things were looking up. Marc was almost done with radiation therapy, and the treatment seemed to be working. The Friday night of Memorial Day weekend, there was the normal houseful of kids when one of Michael's buddies told Terrie that Michael had fallen asleep amidst all the hubbub.

"After all the kids left I went upstairs and asked Mike 'What's up?' and he's like, 'I don't know. Everything's achy, and I have this cough.' I say, 'You know, you've really been pushing,' because it was almost the end of the school year and all the projects and tests and everything were due. It was also the height of lacrosse season, so he was practicing every single day and they were playing a lot of games. So I say, 'You're wiped. You probably just need to chill.'"

Terrie gave Michael Tylenol Cold and Flu but he kept complaining about feeling tired and achy. On Memorial Day, the family went to a barbecue where a nurse friend told Terrie that Michael looked 'punky.' Terrie had to agree.

The next day, Terrie took Michael to their pediatrician, who took a blood test. Michael's white blood count was elevated but it was nothing drastic, so the doctor recommended staying with the Tylenol and cough medicine. Michael went to school and played lacrosse but continued to complain about not feeling right. Plus, says Terrie, he wasn't looking anything like his normal healthy, energetic self. So she took him back to the pediatrician, who sent Michael for a chest x-ray.