Authors: Lynne Wilding
‘Well, Dr Klemski? …’ Vanessa encouraged the doctor to speak while at the same time she ignored Bren’s frown implying that she should wait for the doctor to get the ball rolling. A listless Kyle lay in her lap. Every day he became more listless and less the Kyle she knew and adored. Something was very wrong with her son and she wanted answers — now.
‘Well, Vanessa, Bren, as you know, we’ve run lots of tests. Tested young Kyle for practically every disease we could think of. Coming up with a diagnosis has posed some difficulties but …’
‘That’s obvious. Doctor, surely you must have reached some conclusion as to what’s wrong with him?’ Vanessa insisted. She gave Dr Klemski her no-nonsense-now look.
‘We have.’ Klemski’s features set. He nodded his head at her, knowing that he could no longer delay telling them. ‘Your son has what is known as biliary atresia. It’s a rare, congenital condition and is usually discovered when a baby is very small, just a couple of weeks old. It’s amazing that it has remained undetected in Kyle for this long.’ He paused for a few seconds to let that sink in, then he continued. ‘With biliary atresia what happens is that the flow of bile from the liver becomes obstructed. We don’t know why it occurs, but when it does the consequences are serious. Kyle’s liver shows signs of cirrhosis which is why, though he inherited his olive skin from his mother, the skin tone has now become distinctively yellow, the colour of jaundice.’
‘Shit,’ Bren muttered under his breath, forgetting his manners.
Vanessa called on all her acting skills to appear calm, and to control the wave of shock and fear threatening to overtake her. The doctor had explained it succinctly enough but she had little real understanding of what it meant to her son. It was his tone — nothing uplifting or hopeful — that chilled her heart. Somehow she rallied and refused to be shaken by the fear threatening to overtake her, and asked what had to be asked.
‘What can you do to make him better?’
‘As I said, it’s a serious illness …’
‘We understand that.’ Impatience won over politeness. ‘I want to know how to restore Kyle’s health, Doctor. We’ll do whatever it takes.’ She glanced towards Bren, ‘Won’t we?’
‘Of course.’
Dr Klemski made a steeple with his fingertips and his mouth skewed into a sympathetic smile. ‘For a small number, about ten per cent, medication corrects the problem. We started medicating him yesterday and will be able to see in a few weeks whether it works in Kyle’s case. For the rest who don’t respond to the medication there is no cure to halt the progression of biliary atresia. If Kyle doesn’t respond to medication the best chance he has is,’ he paused to look straight at Vanessa,
‘a liver transplant.’
‘A
liver transplant,’
Vanessa repeated weakly. ‘Yes. A healthy, compatible liver will give Kyle a very good chance for a reasonably normal life,’ Dr Klemski went on. ‘Survival rates for such transplant patients currently run at ninety per cent for the first year and eighty per cent over five years. Medically speaking, that’s reasonable odds.’
Vanessa’s head was spinning. How could she take it all in? Her son’s life was at risk. Dr Klemski wasn’t talking about a transplant as an option, he was saying that if medication didn’t fix the problem, it was the only option for Kyle’s survival. She glanced at Bren again who, like her, appeared struck dumb by the news. The only person not concerned was Kyle who, bored, had fallen asleep in her lap.
‘The operation could be done in Brisbane — where the world’s first transplant took place back in 1989, or in Sydney at the Camperdown Children’s Hospital,’ Dr Klemski added gently. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a lot to absorb in one go but I have to be frank, looking at the long-term situation and that, as it’s taken so long to diagnose your son’s problem,
it’s most likely that the medication won’t work and that he will need a transplant.’
‘Assuming that’s so, don’t we have to wait for a donor organ to become available?’ Vanessa asked. The thought of having to wait like a hovering vulture for that to happen through someone else’s death was abhorrent to her, but if that was the only way …
‘That used to be the case, but often it isn’t these days. Liver and kidney transplants, while rare in Australia have, arguably, the highest success rates of all transplanted organs. Often the transplant team finds a match within the family and at Kyle’s age, his liver is quite small. No more than twenty per cent of a healthy liver could be taken from an adult donor and transplanted into Kyle. I’ve already taken the precaution of seeking advice from the head of Sydney’s transplant team, Dr Frank Samuels, that the entire procedure, from donor to Kyle, takes about fifteen hours. And,’ he added, ‘according to Dr Samuels, it’s a more unpleasant operation for the donor, with a risk of complications, than for the recipient.’
‘My God!’ Bren, couldn’t sit still any longer. He stood and began to pace the doctor’s office.
‘So Bren or myself could donate part of our liver to Kyle?’
‘Whoever is the most compatible. Dr Samuels and the recipient’s family usually decide that. I suggest we continue the medication on Kyle. He should be admitted to hospital where we can observe if there’s an improvement.’ He paused to shuffle a few of the papers in his folder. ‘But, we should also do blood
tests and biopsies on close family members to determine which liver is the most compatible so, in the unhappy event that he needs a transplant, the best possible donor will be available.’ Bren’s restlessness distracted the doctor for a few seconds. ‘Sometimes it’s neither parent but a cousin or a grandparent.’
‘And the sooner the better, before Kyle deteriorates further?’ Vanessa heard herself say the words. How could she come to terms with the awful fact that her darling son’s life was in danger. She didn’t want to, couldn’t think about a life without her son, how bleak and devoid of meaning it would be.
‘Right. In Kyle’s case, time may not be on our side. While we wait to see how he responds we can do the family’s tests here, send the results to Dr Samuels, and if needs be, he’ll schedule a date for the operation,’ Dr Klemski informed them matter-of-factly.
Vanessa looked the doctor squarely in the eyes. ‘Dr Samuels, is he the best?’
‘The best and the most experienced with regard to this speciality in the country,’ Dr Klemski confirmed with a nod of his head.
Vanessa looked across at Bren who was standing side on, staring out the window. His outdoor tan had paled and his hands were trembling. He planted them in the pockets of his trousers to hide that they were. Like her he was shocked and distressed and, she feared, not coping well with this dreadful news. She ran a finger across her forehead to wipe away the sheen of cold sweat — it was fear. Never in her imaginings, when she had insisted Kyle be checked out had she expected this dire news. Her brain was
in a whirl, a mass of tangled thoughts and anxieties dominating, and she had to blink several times to force the tears back. Now was not the time. Later, when she was alone, she could and would cry her heart out over her baby’s plight.
Keep focussed, she told herself, now was the time for action, for being positive, and for keeping her fears buried deep in her subconscious. ‘Very well. When can the tests be done?’
‘Tomorrow and the day after. I’ll organise appointments with a pathologist I know, and have my secretary call you. The results will take several days. You’ll stay in Darwin till then?’
‘Yes. You have our Cullen Bay address.’ She tried to smile but it was an utter failure. ‘Thank you. Having to give this kind of news can’t be easy for doctors.’ Awkwardly, with Kyle in her arms, she got up. Bren came and took their sleeping son, cradling him in his strong arms. She could see tears in her husband’s eyes and was hard pressed not to give way to them herself.
Shaking his head in sympathy, Dr Klemski watched the Selby family walk out of his office …
As they waited to see whether Kyle responded to the medication for biliary atresia, the family, including Hilary, Stuart, Curtis and Lauren, had blood tests, with Bren, Vanessa, Hilary and Curtis also having biopsies. After the results were collated, it came as a surprise that Curtis was the one with the highest compatibility rate, having an eighty-five per cent compatibility, with Bren and Vanessa at sixty-three per cent. Once Curtis knew, he offered himself as
the donor and while Bren, pettily, wasn’t pleased that Curtis had the higher compatibility rate, Vanessa convinced him that if it were necessary, Curtis should be the donor because by then their son would need the best chance the higher compatibility rate would give him.
Luck did not go Kyle’s way … The medication did not improve his condition and, with time running out as Kyle’s health deteriorated, the transplant was scheduled to take place in Sydney, within two weeks …
Night time humidity hung in the air like an invisible fog. Day time temperatures were close to unbearable and, in the evening, not much better.
Vanessa tiptoed into Kyle’s room. Wearing only his nappy — that’s all he wore day and night in the heat — he was fast asleep, with the overhead fan rotating at full speed to keep him cool. Poor darling, he slept a good deal these days because he had so little energy. She looked at the change table. His case was packed and ready but not zipped up. It contained clothes plus several of his favourite toys. Tomorrow they would ‘hike’ to Sydney, a trip of approximately four and a half thousand kilometres which would take, with waiting time for connections, the entire day and part of the night.
For several minutes her gaze browsed over the contents of his room, as if memorising how the contents epitomised her son’s emerging personality. He loved soft toys and had a large collection of various sized teddy bears on a shelf. And he was almost sitting up, so his car collection appealed to
him. He especially loved his Tonka cement mixer. Over near the window was the sports collection he would play with as he grew — a much used and dented cricket bat that had once been Curtis’s, a soccer and rugby ball, a tennis racquet, and paddles to play shuttlecock.
She blinked back tears as he rolled onto his side. She tried not to speculate on the next few days and how awful they were going to be. Walking to the window she looked out. A light in Curtis’s cottage was still on. Undoubtedly, he was finding it hard to sleep too. His generosity in offering a portion of his liver to save Kyle was something for which she would be eternally grateful. He was giving her son the gift of life and that made her feel closer to him.
She left Kyle’s room and moved down the hall towards her bedroom but stopped when she heard a voice in the office. She went to see who it was. Bren was on the phone. She managed to catch a few words before, on seeing her, he said a quick goodbye and hung up.
‘Talking to Stuart? A bit late in the evening for a chat, isn’t it?’
‘Just catching up,’ he said evasively, his gaze unwilling to meet hers.
‘Really?’
Her unconvinced tone made him retort, ‘Talking to others, like Stuart, about Amaroo’s problems helps me to deal with Kyle’s problem.’
‘I have serious doubts that Stuart knows too much about what happens on stations these days. Hasn’t he been off Amaroo for over thirty years?’ She could have added but didn’t, that she and Fran
were the ones who’d done most of the caring and worrying about Kyle. Keeping a sick baby amused and interested, trying to stimulate his appetite, was no easy task. As well, she had the sneaking belief that Stuart put strange, unworkable ideas into Bren’s head because he was such a nosy, annoying man, and she objected to his sly attempts to interfere with the management of Amaroo. She and Curtis were aware of Stuart’s undue interest in the station and didn’t like it, but they trod warily around Bren because he didn’t consider Stuart’s input a problem, and would have been offended had the suggestion been made that Stuart was influencing his decisions.
‘The timing isn’t appropriate, Bren. You could have been more helpful with Kyle instead of wasting time chatting to your uncle …’
There, she had said what she had wanted to say for several weeks without worrying if it bruised his feelings. At times he became so self-absorbed that he could block out everything other than what interested him and when he did, it hurt. She expected more compassion and caring and his lack of it reinforced an opinion she was coming to of late, that in many ways Bren’s nature was close to his uncle’s. Stuart, according to gossip, appeared to care little for Diane’s feelings or sensibilities and Bren was developing similar traits.
‘Well, that’s great!’ It only took an instant for his tone to turn aggressive. ‘You think I don’t care about our son being ill.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ she retorted, her spine tightening with tension. ‘I said you could have been more helpful. That’s not quite the same.’
Bren dropped the pen he’d been fiddling with and thumped his fist on the desk. ‘Damn it, Vanessa, I’m doing the best I can to deal with … Kyle. It … it isn’t easy, seeing him so lethargic, disinterested. He is usually such a lively, scrappy baby.’ He ran frustrated fingers through his hair and shook his head as he admitted. ‘I don’t know how to handle it.’
‘Do you think it’s easy for me?’ she threw back. ‘It’s torture but somehow one makes the best of it.’
He reached for the whisky glass standing to the right of his hand, and took a swallow. ‘Women are better at that sort of thing than men.’
‘I won’t argue with that.’ Her disdain evident, she watched him down the last drop of whisky. ‘Go easy on the alcohol, Bren. We’ve an early start tomorrow and it’s going to be a long day travelling.’
‘Christ,’ he exploded again. ‘Can’t a bloke have a drink without being made to think he’s an alcoholic?’
Stung by his irrationality, and knowing it wasn’t his first drink of the evening, she hit back. ‘I would think you’d have more important things on your mind, such as Kyle’s health, than choosing to get sozzled.’
In a defiant gesture and expressly to annoy her, he picked up the bottle of Johnnie Walker and poured another generous measure into the glass. ‘Oh, leave me alone, Vanessa. Just … go away.’