Less Yellow

Today was scan day.

But this one felt different because I wasn’t there.

I stayed back home with Cohen because he had school, so Megan took Kinley to Memphis for this round. That is one of the strange parts of this journey. Cancer does not pause real life. One child still has school. One child has scans. One parent is in Memphis. One parent is back home. And somehow, we are all trying to stay together while being pulled in different directions.

The night before the scan, Megan took Kinley to a taco truck for Cinco de Mayo.

A little pre-scan party.

That probably sounds strange if you have not lived this kind of life. But we have learned that when joy shows up, you do not ask it too many questions. You just grab it by the hand, order tacos, and let your kid drink a glass-bottle Coke like life is still wonderfully normal for a minute.

And in that moment, it was.

Kinley sitting there in her hoodie, holding her Coke, giving that look she gives. The one that says she knows exactly who she is and she is not waiting on anybody’s permission to enjoy herself.

That picture did something to me.

Because the next day was heavy. PET scan day. The kind of day where every parent’s heart starts doing math it was never meant to do. But the night before, there were tacos. There was Cinco de Mayo. There was Megan making sure Kinley got a little fun before the medical part took over again.

This was also the first time Kinley was assigned to the Ronald McDonald House outside of St. Jude, and it was awesome. That may not sound like a big deal, but it really was. When you are traveling for treatment, the place you stay matters. It can either feel like another medical extension of the hospital world, or it can feel like a soft place to land.

And this place felt like a gift.

A little more space. A little more normal. A little more room to breathe.

I was getting all of this through pictures and updates from Megan. That is one of the hard parts of this journey. Sometimes being a parent means being in the hospital room. Sometimes it means staying home with the other child and trying to keep life steady there too.

Both are love.

But both hurt in different ways.

The next day, Kinley had her PET scan after her first two rounds of the ONITT clinical trial at St. Jude.

I remember finally calling Megan because I couldn’t take the anticipation anymore.

I had tried to wait patiently. I had tried to stay busy. I had tried to be present with Cohen and keep the day moving like a normal day. But scan days are not normal days. Eventually the waiting started crawling under my skin.

So I called.

Megan answered, and I could tell they were in the middle of something. She said something along the lines of, “We are receiving information now. But it looks good…”

And then she hung up.

That was it.

Looks good.

I just sat there with those words.

I didn’t even know what to do with them at first. Good news? Real good news? Or the kind of good news you try to manufacture when you are desperate to have something, anything, to celebrate?

Cancer teaches you to be careful with hope. You want to grab it and run, but you have also been hit enough times that you almost do not trust it when it shows up at the door.

About an hour later, Megan called me back.

By then she had sent me the picture of the scan. March on one side. May on the other.

In those PET scan images, the bright yellow showed active cancer. In March, there was so much yellow. Too much. More than any parent should ever have to see inside their child’s body.

It is hard to explain what it feels like to look at images of your child’s body and know those pictures carry so much weight.

That screen does not show her laugh.
It does not show her personality.
It does not show the way she keeps going.
It does not show the way she has handled all of this with more courage than any kid should ever have to find.

It just shows the battle.

But this scan was different.

Megan said they were seeing significant progress.

There were still active tumors. We knew that. This was not “the cancer is gone.” This was not the finish line. But there was less of it. The areas were smaller. The yellow had decreased.

The trial was working.

ONITT was effective.

I do not even know how to fully describe what that felt like. Pure joy. Relief. Gratitude. Answered prayers. The kind of moment where your body almost does not know how to receive good news because it has been bracing for bad news for so long.

We cried. We thanked God. We breathed.

And honestly, I did not have many words.

It reminded me of when Kinley was first diagnosed, but in the complete opposite way. Back then, I could barely talk to God. I was too angry. Too scared. Too broken. Prayer felt impossible because I did not know what to say through all the fear and heartbreak.

But this time, the lack of words came from joy.

I just kept saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” over and over again.

Half prayer. Half celebration.

Maybe that was enough.

If ONITT continues to be effective, Kinley can have access to it for up to 24 months from her first round. That makes this scan feel even bigger. We were not just looking at whether the first two rounds did something. We were looking at whether this door may stay open longer.

And right now, it looks like the door is still open.

We know this trial is not something they have promised will cure her. We know that. We have heard the hard words. We understand the reality as much as any parent can understand something their heart refuses to accept.

But today still mattered.

Because after two rounds, we got to see that something was changing. Something was responding. There was a reason to breathe a little deeper.

And when you are walking through something like this, sometimes you stop asking God to show you the whole road.

Sometimes you just ask Him for enough light to see the next step.

That is where we are.

One scan.
One round.
One trip to Memphis.
One child at school.
One child at St. Jude.
One family trying to hold together the normal and the unimaginable at the same time.

And I kept thinking about surrender.

Maybe fully surrendering does not mean God finally does what we want. Maybe that is too simple. Too small. But maybe when we finally open our hands, we are able to see Him moving in ways we were too clenched up to notice before.

Because He is moving.

We feel it.

We felt it in the peace that came before the answer.
We felt it in the scan results.
We felt it in the less yellow.
We felt it in Megan’s voice.
We felt it from Memphis to home.

This was not manufactured good news.

This was real.

There are still tumors. There is still a long road. There is still no promise that this ends the way we beg God for it to end.

But today, the trial is working.

Today, there is less cancer.

Today, Kinley is still fighting.

And today, God gave us a reason to celebrate.

So we are going to celebrate it.

Not because everything is fixed.

But because God gave us light for the next step.

And today, that light felt bright.