by Brad Haddin
I spoke to Karina at least once a day while I was away to find out how Mia was coping with the chemo. It was rough. Even with nothing in her stomach, she was vomiting frequently. It got so bad that she had an abdominal x-ray to check for a bowel obstruction. Nothing showed up; it seemed to be purely a chemo reaction.
The first thing I wanted to do when I arrived back in Sydney on 1 September was go out to Westmead. But I’d picked up a cold while I was away and that made me too much of a risk. It was great to be home with Zac, but very hard to not be out at the hospital to help. Karina prepared for the move to the isolation room by culling a lot of things that had accumulated in Mia’s room. Everything else — from toys to the small storage drawers to the cot in which 13-week-old baby Hugo slept every night next to Mia’s larger cot — had to be cleaned and sterilised before the move.
Mia was sicker by the day and the doctors were trying various combinations of medication to try to relieve her constant nausea. The transplant took place on 4 September. I still had cold symptoms and so couldn’t be there, but Karina described it all to me. She said the process of delivering the stem cells was strangely anticlimactic. So much was riding on these cells and they had such a big job to do that Karina said she’d been thinking about them in terms of liquid gold surrounded by glitter and stars! In reality, they took the form of a 45ml bag of generic-looking fluid, which took 10 minutes to go in intravenously, followed by two hours of hydration fluids.
Almost immediately, Mia’s body reacted to the transplant. Her heart rate and blood pressure jumped and her liver function was affected. By the end of the day she had developed the beginning of chemo-triggered mucositis, an incredibly painful condition that affects the mucous membranes lining the digestive tract all the way from the mouth on down. The affected tissue swells up and forms ulcers that get covered in a thick discharge. It becomes hard to swallow or speak. It not only feels horrible but can also be dangerous, bringing the chance of infection.
By the next morning, Karina reported that Mia was puffy from fluid build-up. She was on a lot of different drugs to manage the symptoms, including antibiotics and an anti-fungal, and she’d had a chest x-ray to check her lungs and an ECG to monitor her heart. I had to go play cricket, which was the last thing I felt like doing. Normally I would at least have been able to spend time with Mia beforehand, but my cold symptoms meant I had to stay away.
It was clear that Karina couldn’t go on trying to care for Hugo full-time while also looking after Mia. She called her parents, who came to pick up Hugo. He was still being breast-fed, so handing him over to her mother meant coping with the physical discomfort of weaning him so suddenly, as well as the emotional roller-coaster that came with it.
Only a day and a half after the stem cells had gone in, Mia developed an infection, although the doctors didn’t yet know what kind it was. She had a blood transfusion but continued to deteriorate so quickly that by 4.30 p.m. she was in PICU.
The game I was playing was a squad trial at Blacktown, as a warm-up for the City vs Country pre-season trial two days later. When I checked my phone at the end of play there was a message from Karina asking me to call. I could tell from the tension in her voice that something was wrong. I called back. She was in PICU and put the doctor there on the phone. I said, ‘Are things under control? I would come in but I have a cold.’ He said, ‘You should come anyway.’ My stomach dropped. This time round I understood the significance: they were gravely concerned about Mia making it through the night.
When I arrived I was fitted with a special, very tight mask before I went to Mia’s bedside. It was shocking how swollen she looked. Her eyes were like slits in her puffy face, she couldn’t swallow, and she had lines of different kinds going everywhere. And yet she smiled when she saw me and wouldn’t let go of my finger. I would have given anything to change places with her and save her from all this suffering.
Zac and Hugo were being well cared for by their grandparents, so I didn’t have to go home. It was just as well, because although I couldn’t stay in PICU I couldn’t bear to leave the hospital. I spent the night in the parked car, dreading the possibility of the phone ringing. I didn’t even want to think about the fact that in a week I was supposed to be going away to Perth for the first games of the domestic season.
The following day the doctors were still trying to get Mia’s heart rate and blood pressure down. She cried every time she had to be moved and was too sick to even watch a DVD. But she slowly improved as time passed and 24 hours later was well enough to go back down to her isolation room. The following day I had the City– Country game and I breathed a huge sigh of relief on hearing that all was well when I checked my messages after the game.
A couple of days later, Mia had improved so much she decided she wanted to eat hot chips and a sausage roll. Karina raced down to the cafeteria, but when she got back with them Mia just licked a couple of chips. Well, at least she was thinking about food. That was really important because the dietician told us that all the time she’d had to spend being fed by tube meant that she’d skipped some important stages kids go through at her age, such as getting a feel for food textures and tastes and learning about chewing enough to swallow without choking. She warned us that even when Mia’s stomach did get back to normal we’d have to help her train herself to eat.
The twelfth of September was Zac’s fourth birthday and we wanted to make it really special for him. My mum stayed with Mia while we took Zac to a favourite spot in Sydney Olympic Park and held a birthday party with his friends. I have no idea where she found the time or energy, but somehow Karina had managed to be at home long enough to make Zac an amazing pirate-themed cake, complete with an ocean and a filled treasure-chest, and organise games for the kids to play. It was great to see him so happy and carefree.
The next morning I had to leave for Perth to play against WA in the Blues’ 2012–13 season openers, a one-dayer followed by a Shield game. I was going to be gone for a week, which would have seemed like nothing at all a year ago. Now, with Mia only just out of PICU and still so unwell, it seemed like forever. And why did the first games have to be right across the country, rather than an hour or so away in Melbourne or Brisbane?
The whole time I was away I felt anxious, worried that I would get a call telling me Mia was critical and I needed to come home urgently, or something even worse. There was good reason to be concerned. I’d only been in Perth for a day when Karina rang to tell me that Mia was in the first stages of VOD. The blood vessels in the liver had become inflamed. Blood couldn’t pass through, which made the liver swell up and stopped it doing its job of removing toxins and residue from the blood. This in turn caused fluid to build up in Mia’s tummy and prevented her remaining kidney from working properly.
VOD was uncommon and we had hoped she might dodge this particular bullet, but as the nurses remarked, the poor girl could not take a trick. Karina had agonised about how much she should tell me, but correctly decided I had a right to know what was going on and could handle it. She filled me in, adding that while the condition was definitely serious, the medical team was on top of it and Mia was going to be fine. I wanted to believe that, but I remembered Dr Luce’s words about hospitals being places where things don’t always go right. I asked if I should come home. She said no, I should stay on and play.
Back in Sydney, my cricket had been just where it needed to be, but I found it really hard to get in the right mindset to perform for the one-dayer. In the end we won, although I scored only seven and took a single catch. In addition to our phone calls, Karina was sending me photos of Mia each day. Her swollen abdomen was painful to look at. In fact, I found it hard to look at the photos at all, she was so clearly unwell. But I had to find a way to separate my feelings from what I needed to do on the field, and I managed it more effectively in the Shield game than I had in the one-dayer, taking three good catches early on the first day’s play.
There was a big scare with Mia the following day when her vit
al signs dropped so suddenly and severely that the rapid-response-team alarm was triggered. Soon afterwards she was moved back to PICU because fluid was building up in her lungs, making it hard for her to breathe. When Karina called to tell me, I thought immediately of the multisystem organ failure we’d been warned about. ‘Is Mia going to die?’ I asked her — the same question I’d asked when she had called me in the West Indies, but this time more urgent. I knew now how quickly things could go wrong. Karina told me that Mia was a fighter and so far her liver and lungs were still functioning. The treatment team was constantly monitoring her and dealing with each problem as it arose. I tried to stay positive, but I was incredibly relieved when we won the match on Day 3 and I could go home early.
I went straight from the airport to the hospital. While I was in transit, Mia had bounced back enough to be moved out of PICU again, although she was still very puffed up, having gained 3kg of fluid in a couple of days, and was on oxygen to help her breathe. But she was continuing to improve. As we cuddled and played together, something shifted in my thinking. I knew I was at a fork in the road. To continue with cricket, I had to find a different way of dealing with things when I was out there on the field. I needed to compartmentalise my feelings and thoughts so that I could fully focus and deal with one thing at a time: cricket when it needed to be cricket; family the rest of the time. I’d gone away and although Mia had suffered setbacks, the terrible scenarios I’d imagined hadn’t happened. From that moment on, everything changed. I didn’t stop worrying about Mia or thinking about her, but I found a way to corral those thoughts and fears and hold them to one side to deal with later.
On 27 September, five days after my return, we had our next Shield game, up against Tasmania. This time it was in Sydney, at Bankstown Oval. I went into the game in a very different frame of mind than I’d had in Perth. It was time to perform. We won the toss and Michael Clarke sent us in to bat. At my accustomed number six on the batting order, I watched in concern as our top order collapsed at 3 for 7. Pup and Steve Smith went some way to rectifying things, but things were still very dicey at 4 for 64 when I went in. I knew that my mother had gone to stay with Mia, enabling Karina, Zac and Hugo to be at the ground for the match, and I spotted them by the sightscreen.
Steve and I put on 60 together at a reasonably slow rate before he went for 64. Then Moises Henriques came out and we just opened up. My century approached and everything felt right. Hitting 100 brought a wave of emotion. I sank to my knees for a moment, thinking of Mia and everything we had been through. Punter walked past, tapped me on the back and said, ‘Well done.’ Resuming play, I added another 14 before being caught, with Moises and I contributing a much-needed 275 of our total of 442. I was back — better than ever. The rest of the game felt just as good, and I kept well across the entire match. It really was a turning point for me, and from that game onwards I played the best cricket of my career in all forms of the game.
By the beginning of October 2012, Mia had been in hospital for 80 days straight following her surgery, and the doctors estimated it would be at least another four to six weeks before she’d be going anywhere. Radiation was the next stage of treatment, and if all had gone to plan it would have started at this point. But until her liver was back to its normal size — probably in a month or so — nothing could happen. Not surprisingly, Karina, who was with Mia most of the time, had periods when she struggled with the continual setbacks and she fiercely missed Zac and Hugo, sometimes having to go without seeing them for days at a time. But the positivity and strength of character that had drawn me to her saw her bounce back quickly, and she encouraged me to stay the course and keep on playing cricket.
Mia had more ups and downs over the next couple of days, but overall she improved so much that on 5 October she was allowed out of her isolation room into the hospital grounds, which she absolutely loved. It went so well that the following day she got a four-hour gate pass to come home. Everything had to be thoroughly cleaned before her arrival and she was encumbered by an oxygen tank and pain-relief pump, adding an extra level of complication to the challenge posed by her central line. It was beautiful to see her at home, although we were all ready to drop when it was time to go back to the hospital.
After coming through her BMT successfully, Mia was doing so well that Karina and I had decided I should go to South Africa with the Sydney Sixers for the Champions League Twenty20 Trophy. It was to be a three-week trip starting on 9 October, which meant I’d be away for Mia’s second birthday. When the day came I got to the airport just fine, but despite the shift that had happened in my thinking after the Perth game, I found that after I’d checked in I had to go for a walk through the terminal on my own so I could convince myself to get on the plane.
I didn’t have much time to brood once we arrived: our first warm-up game was on 11 October. We won that one and every one of the next four in our group. They were great games, with the team working really well together. I relished the feeling of playing at my best, and it was nice to be recognised with a Player of the Match award in our defeat of Yorkshire. I also enjoyed the tactical challenges of captaincy — those game-changing decisions like deploying spinners instead of quicks in attack. The semi-final was an edge-of-the-seat thriller that came right down to the final over, but we won it, securing us a berth in the final against the South African Highveld Lions. I took a ball to the thumb in that game, which left the bone with a small crack and damaged the nail bed, but I played on anyway and had an anaesthetic block for the final game. It too was thrilling stuff and we absolutely nailed it, winning by 10 wickets to claim the trophy on our very first appearance in the tournament.
Before I’d left, Karina and I had made a pact that she would tell me exactly was happening with Mia rather than keep things from me for fear it would affect my playing. If I’d been worried there was bad news I didn’t know about, it wouldn’t have been possible to concentrate on the field and I wouldn’t have been able to do justice to my teammates or myself. As long as I knew exactly what was going on, I could compartmentalise my mind the way I needed to. When I was playing, I was fully present. When we’d finished, I could check my phone and deal with things as they were.
The news wasn’t all good, that’s for sure, but at least Mia didn’t end up back in PICU. In trying to make some progress on Mia’s stomach issues, gastroenterologist Dr Annabel Magoffin assessed her and warned Karina that the condition may never get better and that she might need surgery to put in place a bypass from her stomach to her intestines. This was very upsetting news for Karina, the latest in a long list of possible long-term complications, including heart problems, diabetes and a higher risk of certain other cancers. Unable to sleep, she texted me in the middle of the night, early evening my time. I wrote back, ‘She will be fine. Our job is to give her the best life she can have. Also love her like no other person has been loved.’
Karina said afterwards that she found a lot of comfort in that message, reminding herself of it the following day when an x-ray revealed the horrible news that the head of Mia’s left femur, the long bone in her thigh, was fractured — possibly months earlier, when the chemo got rid of the tumour. The doctors were amazed that Mia was able to move her leg freely let alone stand on it, but it certainly explained a lot of her pain. There was more. Out of its correct position, the bone wasn’t getting the blood supply it needed. As a result, Mia was at best likely to have a permanent limp and at worst be confined to a wheelchair and need a hip replacement in her teens. The orthopaedic specialist, Dr David Little, looked at her MRI and said he’d never seen anything like it before.
I arrived back in Sydney to learn that further scans had revealed she also had fractures above her right knee. However, endocrinologist Dr Craig Munns said a newly developed drug designed to boost blood supply in the bones offered hope. She now had a second nasal tube, a transpyloric tube (TPT), which went through her nostril and past her stomach and dripped liquid food right into her intestine. During the course
of several weeks her tolerance built from 5ml, to 10ml then 14ml of fluid per hour, which when you think about it is not much, but it was progress and by 6 November she was well enough to undergo two weeks of daily radiation. This was delivered in the adult hospital and the looks of shock and pity on the faces of the other people in the waiting room when an orderly pushed in tiny bald Mia in her cot brought Karina to tears every day. The procedure itself took less than an hour but required Mia to have a general anaesthetic to ensure she didn’t move, which meant by the end of the radiation she’d had 25 general anaesthetics in six months. She was back in her room by 11 a.m. each day, wide awake and wanting to play, but had to be confined to lying in her cot because of her hip. Somehow she just accepted this and didn’t try to fight it, which was pretty amazing for a two-year-old.
With all that going on, I wasn’t ready to re-enter the Australian team yet and it was no surprise when John Inverarity called to tell me they were going with Matthew Wade for the summer’s Tests against South Africa. He made sure I knew the door wasn’t shut to me, though, which I appreciated. I continued to play strongly in the domestic competitions, including a Player of the Match performance in a Blues victory over Queensland in a Sheffield Shield game at Manuka Oval at the end of November. A couple of days later we had an even bigger win on the family front when Mia was allowed home overnight for the first time in almost five months. That visit went so well that four days later, on 6 December, she got her longed-for discharge. It was true that she would be readmitted a mere three days later to begin the final stage of treatment. But after 148 days straight as an inpatient that discharge felt like the most precious piece of paper in the world. There were a lot of miles still to travel but finally things were looking up.