A Lion in the House

Saw a wonderful documentary on PBS, titled the Lion in the House, about children dealing with cancer. See a review here and here in The New York Times.

Death, tear-inducing pain and agonizing treatment dilemmas are all confronted head-on in "A Lion in the House," which will be broadcast over four hours Wednesday and Thursday on 1. PBS's series "Independent Lens." But the heart of the film is the vibrant, vital spirit of children. There's bubbly Alex Lougheed, 7, voted "cutest personality" at camp; easygoing Justin Ashcraft, 19, who has had leukemia for 10 years; and Tim Woods, who is fatherless and admits that he loves the extra attention he receives having cancer. The film's second half features an aspiring rapper, Al Fields, 11, and the determined, active Jen Moone, 6.

A diverse demographic mix of age, sex, race and income, they were selected from several dozen children being treated at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Their families agreed to have cameras and microphones constantly present as they navigated their uncertain route. The filmmakers, Steven Bognar, 43, and Julia Reichert, 59, told them they could stop the filming at any time, but the right was rarely exercised, even when the news was bad or parents argued over whether to try one last experimental medicine.

The documentaries were so well made, so slow paced, that you felt you were in the hospital room, with the parents, making the agonizing choices of whether to continue treatment or to bring the children home to die with dignity. The conflict between parents of selecting which options to go with it. The stress and depression of the other siblings who got frustrated at the attention the child who was suffering was getting. The guilt of the parents who wanted to go further with new experimental treatments that paralyzed their children, but did bring the leukemia into remission. Tim Woods, comes alone to receive treatment, when his mother just cannot take the reality any longer. Or Alex Logheed who can barely see, with a fungus infecting her face, but cries bitterly after leaving the hospital because she is so happy to go home.

This documentary is powerful in that it makes you think how small your problems are, when people are dealing with such life and death issues. How important it is to seize the moment and live to the fullest, instead of wallowing in self pity, anger, envy and jealousy. You never know when tables can turn, and those closet to you can get Hodgkin's lymphoma, and deteriorate in front of your eyes. The never give in attitude of the parents and the children was inspiring, they wanted to keep going, trying out different treatments to contain the spreading disease. To see your child die, is the most painful experience in the world, and as the parents said in the movie, you never recover from it.

I remember a friend whose five year old daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor. A gorgeous heathy child, the only child of her parents. Chemotherapy caused her hair loss, the poisonous tumor kept growing, she soon became blind and deaf. She was taken out of school in India. The steroids made her overweight. Her parents spent enormous amounts of money to bring her to Canada and U.S.A. for treatment. Nothing worked and the beautiful child passed away from their lives.