MAY 7

SURGERY SUCCESS!

Tumor the size of Ohio Removed-Amazin’ Hazen set to fly! Dateline-May 6, 2005

New York, NY -The surgery to resect the primary tumor inside Hazen was a complete success! Not only that… his recovery is beyond good- it is
miraculous!

Check it out…

-The surgery was 5 hours instead of 8.

-The breathing tube came out in less than 24 hours instead of the estimated 4 days!

-We blew out of intensive care at New York Hospital in record time, 2 days- see ya!

-48 hours post-op, he is back at Memorial Sloan Kettering in the Pediatric Observation

Unit (remember POU pronounced POO)

-He is A-M-A-Z-I-N…HAZEN (the doctors said so too)

Oh, Happy Monday

Monday morning, we all awoke at 6:00 am to a beautiful clear and sunny day.

Despite butterflies in the gullet and nervous pangs over the weekend, we managed to be loose and relaxed walking out the door and driving over in Jake’s car.

It was one of those mornings in which it felt great to be up early, the surroundings looked pristine, the garbage man was smiling, midtown Manhattan’s skyscrapers looked majestic, and an orangey glow filled Central Park as we traversed it (no not “The Gates” by Christo)

We all felt good.

We arrived at 7:15 am as requested and it wouldn’t be another four hours until we went down to the OR. Hazen, showed off his fancy footwork on the ninth floor, was loud and exuberant, as any good fighter is before going into the ring. During the wait, our friend Carey kept us occupied…we drank good coffee. We all felt good.

So many of the other cancer families at Memorial Sloan wished us well that morning with hugs, kisses, and thumbs up as did the nurses, doctors, social workers, therapists, and support staff.

Hazen pulled us towards the video game stations where he proceeded to take on a Nintendo Game Cube for the very first time. The joystick (the name in our day) was more like a NASA Mission Control console. Hazen proceeded to play the game “Sonic” for the next 60 minutes. While Suzan, Carey and I were seriously getting nauseous from the topsy-turvy 3D graphics, Hazen mastered the game to some serious advanced levels.

He commented, “Dad, I really like this game better than V-Smile” (his kiddy video game console at home). Immediately, his comment brought me so much happiness as I envisioned the happy, pimply-faced, regular teenager that Hazen will be someday.

At 11:00 AM, we all went down to the OR and hung out in the pre-op room. Two staff members of Child Life accompanied us with Hazen’s favorite board game in tow.

We all sat on the stretcher and played “Spiderman vs. The Green Goblin” together.

Soon, anesthesia came in and gave our son a push of instant magic sleepy potion

through his IV tube. Hazen managed to say, “where’s my bubble gum band aids” before he quickly fell asleep in Suzan’s hold. The impression of the gentle anesthesiologist gracefully carrying Hazen into the OR will always be with us- Hazen, supposedly “knocked out” by the first dose of anesthesia raised his left hand and gave us a thumbs up before the door closed. We knew, all would be good.

We three were able to go through this with such success by means of all of your prayers, support, well-wishes, and positive thoughts. Thank you friends who were able to sit with us in the waiting room and hold us up and stay with us the whole day. We are blessed with a great community of support and a wonderfully gifted surgical team-together an unbeatable combo!

We won this stage of the journey, which might just be the most challenging, though we’re still keenly aware that we have more adventure left (about one more year of treatment). Up next, more chemo, some radiation, immunotherapy, and radioactive isotope therapy. Hazen will either be Superman after this or the glow-in-dark kid who will set off Geiger counters throughout the land-either way, he will be completely healed and cancer free!

Thank you for your support in all forms- words, physical, notes, gestures, nourishment (literal & figurative), spiritual, and lovely love…love the ultimate cure-all.

Stay with us-we continue on and on and win.

We are the Kennedy family,

Suz Scott Hazen (with 2 photos attached)

POSTSCRIPT

A Mission

Another success. As promised, the Kennedy family launched a model rocket, the Alpha III at our own version of Cape Kennedy (Central Park) on May Day. What we thought would be a low-key day before surgery turned out to be a “force Hazen to ingest myriad new yucky meds every 15 minutes for the entire day” campaign. Despite it, we had a blast and…spent 3 hours building our first model rocket together. Hazen finally escaped his month long isolation at 5pm and taxied off to Central Park with rocket in tow. We broke two BIG rules, 1) keeping Hazen in a bubble until surgery & 2) launching rockets in midtown Manhattan in a crowded public place.

At about 5:45 PM EST, the Alpha III blasted off into outer space, to the amazement of us all. We looked up for a long time and it never returned to earth, blasted off forever just like the tumor 18 hours later.