Christian's PPB Cancer Journey

It’s with a heavy heart that we must say that Christian lost his battle with cancer last night. Beginning the week prior, Christian began having a had time swallowing food and then liquids. We tried to get an appointment with his pulmonary team and ended up going to the city on Thursday for a CT scan which showed that the tumors in his left chest have grown to the point that they had began pushing on heart and esophagus. Our surgeon informed us that there wasn’t anything left to do but try and keep him comfortable because the chemo wasn’t working and surgery wasn’t an option. He lost a lot of weight during the week so they told us we could get admitted to the hospital and he could receive TPN through his chemo port to help him get nutrition. Christian asked if we could go and do some fun stuff on Friday before we went to the hospital so on Friday we went to a candy store so he could pick out his favorite candies for when he got better and could eat again and went to the arcade to play his favorite games. Saturday we went in through the emergency room in Westchester so he could begin his TPN. He was having a lot of pain for the last few days which he was getting morphane to help control but it would just knock him out. Sunday afternoon he woke up saying he didn’t feel good. Shortly after 8pm he coded and stopped breathing. The team rushed in and ended up having to incubate him and put him on a ventilator and he was transferred to the ICU and placed under sedation. We found out in the ICU that because so much of his lung was being crushed by the tumor that his lungs went able to properly remove the Co2 from them. The ventilator help flush his lungs for a while but by Tuesday morning it wasn’t enough anymore and his Co2 numbers began to climb again. The doctors came in again and had the talk that no parents ever want to have and they basically told us that his Co2 number were going to continue to climb and make his blood too acidic which would slowly eventually stop his heart. We had all been praying for miracle for him but our prayers were never answered and he passed away at 9:20pm. Me, my wife, his sister, and his grandmother all stayed by his side the entire time holding his hands and showering him with kisses, talking about all the amazing fun stuff we have done and all the fun stuff we were going to do together once he got all better and telling him how proud we were of him and how brave and strong he was.