Finding the way forward

Alexander Poar holds his bunny above his head, eyes wide and a grin as big as the sky on his face.

With spiky hair and full cheeks, he jumps up and down, then drops his beloved bunny and starts jumping on a nearby couch.

He’s cute as a button and full of beans. Ten minutes later he’s running around in the fading summer sunshine, climbing between people’s legs and squealing in delight.

He’s exactly what you’d expect from a boy just shy of his third birthday, and if you ignore the tube taped to his cheek he’d be just like most other toddlers in Shepparton.

Alexander, his mum Breeanna Poar and dad Kyle Lines have had a more challenging 12 months than most small children or their parents.

Alexander was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia some 12 months ago, after weeks and weeks of being “constantly sick” and told he just had viral infections caught at daycare.

Then, after the nosebleeds began and the fatigue set in, a GP told the family to take a trip to GV Health for blood tests.

The results turned their lives upside down.

“Within 24 hours of those tests we were on the way to Melbourne,” Breeanna said.

“We went down in the ambulance and my partner followed us down in the car.”

It was a scary and restless journey for Breeanna, who said her memory of the trip was “very long”.

“Alexander didn’t like getting in the ambulance to start with but fell asleep before we left Kialla,” she said.

Suddenly, hospitals became a second home. Breeanna and Alexander didn’t leave their hospital room for a week.

Blood tests and machines which didn’t stop and a rotating case of nurses became the norm.

“Hospitals are a second home for him now, which is sad,” Breeanna said.

“You ask Alex if he wants to go to the hospital and he’ll say yes, so it’s just another thing for him.

“I hate hospitals. I think I hate them more now because I’m there so often.”

Alexander interrupts briefly, to hand his mum a leaf. She ruffles his hair, like parents do in the movies. He runs off again, giggling.

“He doesn’t know any different from hospitals,” Breeanna said.

“When we go up for chemo days he has all his friends there and he tries to run around like this.”

It’s hard watching him try to do that in hospital, and to think of all the chances he’s missed to run around at home in Shepparton.

The tubes and wires and permanent and semi-permanent changes were challenges on top of parenting a toddler.

Breeanna and Kyle suddenly had to figure out how to make sure their 18-month-old didn’t tear tubes he “hated” out of his nose, make sure he took medicine on time — and far, far more than most parents ever have thrown at them.

Now, he has a device in his chest, just under the skin, to help during the monthly trips to Melbourne for chemotherapy, which come on top of nightly oral chemo.

“It’s like a button which sits under the skin and is like an IV line but under the skin so you don’t worry about taking his tubes out,” Breanna said, looking down at Alexander, who had begun crawling through the legs of his mum, the photographer and the reporter, without a care in the world.

“It still hurts, but it’s less traumatising for him,” she said.

“Yay!” Alexander squealed, jumping up from hands and knees, oblivious to the conversation above him.

“I think a lot of people said ‘if you need anything, let me know’ but it’s harder to ask for help in that situation.”

Breanna and Kyle have had to learn to be full-time nurses and learn more about medicine than they’d ever imagined they would, to the point where instead of hearing test results are “good”, they need to know the figures.

How good? What’s the white cell blood count? The red blood cell count?

“I think once you become a parent of a kid with cancer, it's just everything's numbers,” she said.

The process has been hard on the three of them.

“It’s been hard for Kyle because his family is riddled with cancer, when Alex was diagnosed it was a shock to him, and a lot to take in,” Breeanna said.

“We’ve managed. I don’t know how, but we’ve managed.”

If there was something she wished she’d known to do when Alexander was diagnosed, something she’d tell the next parents who find themselves in the unthinkable position she and Kyle did — it’s to talk.

“Talk. Talk to everyone,” she said.

"I sat in the room the first week and didn’t leave. When I finally did, I started talking to a social worker and then other families who were on the ward.

“They’re similar families in similar situations so we have an understanding of what’s happening.

“It’s harder to explain to your friends and family.”

The support was there — friends, family and more all wrapped their arms around the three of them, but conveying the magnitude of upheaval in their world was difficult for Breeanna.

“I think a lot of them said ‘if you need anything, let me know’ but it’s harder to ask for help in that situation,” she said.

Some of the best help they have received has come through organisations like Redkite and Challenge, which both support families of kids with cancer.

“They’ve got us art therapy, music therapy, massages for parents,” Breeanna said.

“They’ve organised zoo tickets for us. We’re heading away to a holiday house set up for people with medical needs next month.”

As for Alexander, at least 12 more months of treatment lie ahead.

Beyond that is murky, but the plan is for him to attend childcare next year — at a childcare centre, not at GV Health where he’s currently doing one day a month.

One day, he might be a mechanic like his dad.

Alongside the running and jumping and dancing, Alexander is happiest “working on cars with his dad”.

“We go down to the workshop and he’ll tell Alexander to go get a spanner and he’ll go get him a spanner,” Breeanna said.

“I got him some toy cars which come apart a little bit, you can take the wheels off, and he brings his cars out at home and pulls them apart.”

Breeanna looks across at Alexander, running back towards her without a care in the world, and smiles as wide as the sky.