Sign Here

I sign a lot of things pretty mindlessly. After all there are just so many of them. Credit card receipts probably top the list. I click quickly through the pages of online acceptance forms for new software, hitting 'I Agree' without much concern for what I've consented to. Recently the discharge papers for Henry's clinic visits have become that way too. We've been to so many of them and nothing, thankfully, has changed of late so we get the same instructions each time. Call for a fever, take these medications, here's the oncologist's on-call number (which by the way, I put into my phone the very first time), schedule an appointment out front, sign here.

Today was a bit different. There were general instructions regarding Henry's radiation, but page two ran down the list of side effects.

Common



• Hair loss


• Reduced or absent growth hormone production


• Reduced or absent pituitary hormones requiring life-long medication


• Impaired backbone growth


• Reduced school performance and possible need for special schooling

Usually effects like this were not of the 'common' variety, but fell under the 'rare' list. While chemotherapy was tough, we've managed to avoid many of the more compounding effects. Radiation was threatening to be different, harsher.

So Henry is sitting on my lap, the radiation oncologist has handed me the clipboard with the consent form. This is usually where my eyes automatically scan for the line to sign, but I delayed. While I know that the alternative to doing this is risky too, my signature on this line was the point at which Henry was going to be made different. The therapy couldn't proceed without this signature. I held the pen and pretended to read the paper again. I felt his weight in my lap, his energy. "I can't wait to eat daddy," he said for the twelfth time in 5 minutes.

I signed it of course. But there was an awful lot of careful thought into that signature, even beyond those seconds turned minutes holding the pen, and my son's future, in my hand.