What mom can't cure

The rooms (his and mine) are littered with medicines. Some were prescribed by the doctor we saw at C.H.O.P. in Exton. Others we went out for around 1:30 in the morning, after the Saturday night drive to the emergency room. Still others we bought over the counter at our local drugstore.

I lose count. But my Mr. C doesn't. He gets up early to take one drug, then another one a half an hour after that. By that point, it's too late for breakfast, so he grabs a Promax bar on his way out the door to the bus.

After a couple of months of pain, he stopped eating food he thought might upset his stomach -- and now the bones of his legs are prominent his slender calves, this 13-year-old who is now taller than his mom.

We know he doesn't have appendicitis. The barium swallow showed no blockage. Next week? The endoscopy.

In the night, I hear him getting up to get another antacid. The medicines, while not curing his illness, have made it possible for him to eat again, he tells me. But it is so hard to have his doctors tell him something will help -- and then it doesn't help, he says.

Tonight he lay in bed, his hand on his tummy. Next door in her bedroom, his sister chattered on the phone, oblivious.

I did the only thing I could -- held him. As I had done thirteen years ago, when we thought we might lose him. We'll figure this out, I said. You've got the A team here.

And hoped...prayed...that I was correct.

I just want to be a normal boy again, he said the night we drove down to the hospital.

Nothing more than that, my darling. Nothing more than that.