Little Johnny is happily playing. As he usually is. One time he plays with his friends, the other time he plays alone with his toys. This was one of those other times. Without a care in the world Johnny was living all the adventures his imagination could provide for his plastic dinosaurs and other animals. Right now the dinosaurs were running for their lives because of a big flood. Mommy wouldn’t be happy with all that water on the carpet, but that was of later concern. When all dinosaurs had reached the top of the hill, which looked remarkably like daddy’s comfortable chair, Johnny panted. Understandable, since it isn’t nothing to lead all those animals to safety. Suddenly he felt a sting in his stomach. It really hurt! Au! Johnny sat down on the hill, which had now transformed into daddy’s chair again. His feet were dangling halfway down. Au! Another sting. His stomach now really hurt. Carefully he slid down from the chair and walked over to the stairs. His mother was upstairs doing laundry. The walking wasn’t easy because of the pain, so you can imagine the stairs were hell. After only five steps Johnny gave up. He sat down and cried to his mother:
“Mommy, come here please! My stomach hurts. A lot.”
From upstairs, he heard his mother put down the laundry and walk over to the hallway. His mother’s head appeared, she looked slightly annoyed. But that look changed into worry when she saw her little Johnny sitting there pale and sad on the stairs. She rushed down and sat besides him.
“What’s wrong my love? Are you ok?”
Johnny replied that he wasn’t. Mother carried him down from the stairs and put him on the couch. She went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water and an aspirin. Not a regular one, but one for children. They had flavors. This one tasted like orange. Mommy sat with Johnny a while, and later she let him help her folding the laundry. It made him feel a little bit better, but the stomach pain did not disappear. Helping his mother only took his mind off it. In the evening, when daddy had come home, Johnny still wasn’t feeling alright. By now he had eaten an entire array of fruit flavors next to the orange: cherry, lemon and pear. Unfortunately the stomach pain didn’t respond to any of the aspirins. Mother and father decide to see what the night would bring. If little Johnny was still in pain the next morning, they would take him to the doctor. Daddy brought Johnny to bed and read him a fairytale. The one about the dragon and the boy. It was his favorite. But less than half an hour after father had gone down again, Johnny called them back up. The pain got worse. In the end they put Johnny between them and comforted him all night long.
As soon as the sun came up, mother called the doctor. He could see them right away. So she dressed Johnny warmly and carried him to the car. During the ride all mother heard was Johnny’s moaning. It worried her, because Johnny normally talked constantly in the car. Luckily they didn’t have to wait for more than three minutes in the waiting room, before the nice doctor’s assistant asked them in. They entered the doctor’s office. It was a big, white room, with a lot of books on two of the walls. The other walls were filled with posters of different parts of the human body, and in one corner was a skeleton.
“That is cool!”
Johnny thought, forgetting his stomach for just a second. But then it was back again, and he cried. They sat down on the two chairs in front of the doctor’s big wooden desk.
“What seems to be the problem young man?” The man in the white coat asked.
Johnny didn’t answer, so his mother explained the situation.
“Well my boy, let’s see what I can find. Take off your shirt please.”
Mother helped Johnny take it off, while the doctor got a stethoscope out of one of the desk drawers.
“I am going to listen to your stomach now with this special headset,” the doctor told Johnny, “it might feel a little cold.”
Putting his actions to his words, the doctor knelt in front of the child and placed his stethoscope on the boy’s stomach. The doctor had told the truth: it was very cold. Johnny shivered a bit. The doctor examined Johnny’s entire stomach: not a single space was left untouched by the cold piece of metal. He tapped it often while listening intently. He pushed the boy’s stomach first this way, then the other. And he hummed and puffed while doing so. After what seemed like forever, the doctor walked back around the desk, to his seat.
“And you say he hasn’t eaten anything weird? And he has had several aspirins? Hmmm, that’s strange. I can’t seem to find anything wrong. But there must be, because it really hurts Johnny when I touch his stomach there.”
That was true. Johnny had screamed with pain when the doctor had touched him at a specific place, but nothing there gave a clue to what could be wrong.
“I will send you to the hospital. They have better equipment to do some more tests. Here is a note that will get you in.”
With a polite nod the doctor closed the door behind them. Once again they were in the car, but this time on their way to the hospital at the other side of town.
After half an hour and a lot of traffic, they arrived at the hospital. It was a huge old building, made from brown-orange bricks. And it had windows. A lot of windows. Johnny had never seen so many windows in his entire life! The main entrance led them to a maze of sterile white corridors. Mother checked at the information desk where they had to be, and off they went. Down the long corridor, second one on the left, and then up the stairs two floors. But Johnny couldn’t go up the stairs because of the pain. So they went right, following the elevator signs. Luckily they were down that corridor. In the big elevator, next to a mobile hospital bed, they rose to the third floor. Johnny tried to see who was on the bed, but he couldn’t. He was too small. A loud ping informed them that they were on the right floor. They got out and then they got lost. Because they didn’t take the stairs, the route description was no longer useful. But with the help of a nice young black haired nurse, they finally found the right department. Here they had to wait a bit longer. Just when the waiting got too boring, a nurse called Johnny’s name. An older doctor in a long white coat and a pair of glasses at the tip of his nose introduced himself and they started. Mother told the story again, and the doctor repeated his colleague’s tests. This doctor came to the same conclusion, although his stethoscope was less cold.
“Luckily these aren’t the only tests we can do here. Follow me Johnny, we will go for a walk.”
Johnny followed the man in the white coat, holding his mother’s hand. They exited the examination room, turned right and then right into the first corridor. The doctor opened the third door on the left and let them in first. In the middle of the room was a big machine. It had a bed in the middle. The bed was in a tunnel. At the side of the room there was a small office behind glass. It had a lot of computers on the desk. The doctor helped Johnny on the bed, and told him to lie very still.
“Lie very still Johnny. This big machine will take a lot of pictures of you for 10 minutes. It can see inside your stomach. That way we will know what’s wrong with you. You might want to put on these headphones, because it is a very noisy machine.”
The doctor handed the boy the headphones and strapped him to the bed. Then he went into the glass office with Johnny’s mother and his assistant. The assistant pushed a big red button, and that made the machine come alive. It started to hum, and suddenly a lot of noise came out. It sounded like that power drill daddy sometimes used on Saturdays, when he was working in the garage. Although the sound was very loud, and it hurt his ears a bit, he kept as still as he could. He wanted to get out of the machine as soon as possible. And the doctor had said he could get out sooner if he remained perfectly still. In just under ten minutes, which must seem like forever for a young boy to lie still, the machine finally stopped. Everybody came out of the glass office again and his mother helped him to get dressed. The assistant led them back to the waiting room, and told them she would get them when the results were in. But that could take a few hours, she warned them. So the waiting started again. And it was a long wait. Johnny started to get bored, and annoyed. Luckily mommy had the answer. From her bag she took his plastic animals and gave them to Johnny:
“Here my love, play with these. Just make sure they don’t have to escape a big flood this time.”
That kept Johnny busy for a while. Just when the Tyrannosaurus Rex was face to face with the saber tooth tiger, the nurse brought him back to reality:
“The doctor will see you now.”
Soon they were in the doctor’s office again. But the doctor looked much less happy than when they had last seen him.
“I’m afraid I have bad news.”
He didn’t stall, and immediately told them the bad news.
“Johnny has cancer. He has a big tumor in his stomach. If we do not operate on him immediately, we can’t be sure he will survive.”
Silence.
“…”
The doctor and mother looked at each other in silence. There was a lot of tension in the room. It was broken by Johnny, who had first looked at his mother and then at the doctor, a puzzled look on his face.
“Mommy, I’m not a dancer. I don’t even like dancing…”
The doctor then explained to Johnny what was wrong.
“No Johnny, you have cancer. That means that a little part of your stomach is not growing like it should. It’s growing out of control. If we don’t do surgery on you and take it out of your body, your stomach pain will only get worse.”
Johnny got it, it was something bad! He started crying. His mother comforted him. After a while, the doctor called in a nurse, and she brought Johnny to a room. It was a big room, with four beds in it. But he was the only one there. He chose the bed near the window. From there he could see one side of the hospital, with a lot of windows. He decided to start counting the windows. Meanwhile his mother called her husband, and told him the bad news. He told her he would leave work immediately and pick up clothes for Johnny on the way over to the hospital. The time came for the surgery. Johnny was now dressed in a green hospital gown, and the nurses came in to roll him away in his big bed. Mommy and daddy said goodbye, and promised him they would be there as soon as he wakes up. They try to hide their tears as they see their son’s sad face disappear through the door. Johnny is wheeled off to the operating room. In it there are a lot of doctors and nurses. They all wear a white mask before their mouth, and plastic gloves. One nurse says from behind her mask:
“I am going to put this on you. It smells of peppermint. Just breathe deep, while I count to ten.”
Johnny inhales deeply. It does smell like peppermint.
“One, two, thr…”
Before the nurse reaches three, Johnny is out.
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