the effects of routinely poisoning our child

Its a strange world that we have come into. Cancer. The way we live is so very different than it used to be, and also so very different from what I thought it would be that first day or week that we were invited in. You'd think it would be all horror and sadness, but most of the time we manage. Adrenaline, I suppose, gets us through the rough patches. We just soldier on through most of it because we don't really have many choices. Cry or don't cry I guess. I usually don't. I don't think very far in advance either. My mind has become unable to work through a plan because of the many uncertainties that would change it. So many scenarios complicate my thoughts so that I can't make a decision about the future. I plan a week at a time. I plan around mondays. Mondays are William's clinic days. Sometimes he is in the hospital from monday - wednesday. So I plan things as far as the next monday is involved. How will this activity or that have an effect on Liam's treatment on monday or vice versa. Its a very matter of fact business. We hold William down, sometimes chase him down, so that we can administer shots, or access his line with a 22 gage 3/4 inch needle. Its all very matter of fact. He cries. Because it hurts. The fact that it hurts and he's scared doesn't change what we have to do. So we do it anyway. Some of the medicine is yucky. He gets a drink of water with Septra, or a drink of milk with dexamethasone. Sometimes we have to wake him up to give it to him. He sleeps through it usually. We sleep walk him to the bathroom to help him pee. We wake up around the clock to administer meds. We shrug it off. Its normal. We smile for goodness sake. We go to the hospital like its a home away from home and we greet the receptionists, the security guards, the nurses, the psychologists and social workers, doctors, medical techs, janitors. So many familiar and friendly faces and we smile and chat on the elevator with strangers. Sometimes we see a friend in the waiting room. Waiting for chemo. We go through these motions like they are no big deal. Like its no big deal that we are poisoning our children with chemical toxins. Business as usual. Today something was off. Its hard to know when something isn't right because there are so many side effects with every drug. Its normal for William to have fatigue, or nausea, or headaches, or other pains. And the degree of all of these symptoms varies with each drug, with each dose, with each child, with each encounter. But something wasn't right today when I came to the hospital to spend the day with William after Mark had spent the night. He smiled at me, but didn't want to talk. I let him sleep. He didn't hear the nurses come in or out. He didn't react when they had to take his vitals. It seemed like he was sleeping very deep. that's not in itself very surprising considering the high dose chemo he was getting. But it is unlike him to not respond at least to say "leave me alone, I want to sleep." He would wake up and see me but his face was blank. He wasn't registering what I was saying. Finally he told me he couldn't hear very well. It was hard to know how much of his unresponsiveness was because of hearing, and what was maybe something neurological. He didn't want to watch tv at all. If I pestered him enough he would tell me he just wanted to cuddle. I laid next to him all day. But he never cuddled up to me. I am terrified that I have lost my boy. We stopped the chemo. We did a CT. Tomorrow we'll do an LP. The next day probably an MRI. Nobody has said anything about permanence. I just want him to talk to me. He can talk. He just usually only responds after I repeat a question multiple times. Then he tells me he doesn't want to talk, or his throat hurts. I don't know what is wrong. but my quick, intelligent boy is slow and dim. I'm asking along with the doctors, "what have we done?"