Oct 2000 Volume 81 Number 10 "serving the protectors"
When their daughter was suddenly revealed to have only a tenuous hold on life, two SA cops were thrust into a life-shattering crisis. Here, they relive that experience and tell sadly of their uncertain future.
By Brett Williams

Will I Live, Mum?

Chris and Dianne Reynolds still weep over their eight-year-old daughter’s agonizing battle with a rare, murderous tumour last year. The two SA police officers remember their whole world crashing down from the moment doctors confirmed little Amy’s condition.

Just hearing the word cancer struck them with chilling fear. And, the more they learned about the tumour - such as the medical uncertainties it posed for surgeons - the less able they were to function as human beings.

With their other two children, however, Chris and Dianne were yet to face Amy’s slim chance of surviving an operation - or certain death without one.

Amy’s tragedy began in early October, when she felt unusually tired. A doctor diagnosed tonsillitis and prescribed anti-biotics. But with no change in Amy’s condition after a few days, the Reynolds’ consulted their local GP and, later, a North Adelaide paediatrician.

Through blood tests, the paediatrician discovered that Amy’s tiny body was being ravaged by cancer. He broke the devastating news to her parents. Dianne, 39, says simply: “It floored us.”

Amy was the next day admitted to the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, where more extensive tests revealed a shocking but true picture of her condition. From her left kidney - which was greatly enlarged - a Wilm’s tumour had, like a snake, wound itself 12cms up into her heart.

“It was a series of devastations,” says Chris, 40. “We were thinking: 'How much worse can this get?’ ”

Determined never to leave her daughter’s side through this evolving crisis, Dianne, a Forensic Services Branch sergeant, moved into hospital with Amy, while doctors began a programme of chemotherapy to “shrink the snake”.

But by her eighth birthday - October 18 - Amy began to deteriorate and fell into unconsciousness. With her abdomen bloated to the same size as that of a full-term pregnant adult, she lay writhing in pain on her bed.

“I’ve never seen a child throw herself around a bed so much,” says Dianne. “It got worse and worse, to the point where they were giving me drugs.”

And, as no Wilm’s tumour cases had been seen in Adelaide for 25 years, Amy’s doctors had little history on which to base their treatment strategy. Through some urgent research of recent American medical history, however, they discovered 15 US cases of Wilm’s tumour with extensions, but only two of those had penetrated patients’ hearts.

The Reynolds’ began to feel the strain of being powerless to help their daughter. “You’re basically along for the ride,” says Chris, “with the specialist playing God.

“What’s happening to your child is out of your control, and that’s very hard for a parent to see - somebody else stepping into their shoes to do the right thing by their child. That was very painful.”

Meanwhile, Amy’s condition continued to worsen, until the tumour - weakened by chemotherapy - literally burst on October 20. Amy was now haemorrhaging into her abdomen. Hospital staff initiated a “code blue”, while a distraught Dianne - who had been by Amy’s side when she “crashed” - was escorted away.

Staff immediately sprang into action, throwing every stick of furniture and paraphernalia out of Amy’s room, as well as laying cones outside her door. Doctors worked frantically to stabilize her.

Chris - who had left the room to make a telephone call only moments before the code blue - heard the commotion. He rushed back to Amy’s room, but wasn’t allowed to re-enter.

If ever Amy’s life teetered on the brink of death, it was now. “A very stern-faced doctor came out and spoke to us,” Chris remembers.

“He said: 'If we don’t do anything she’s going to die and, if we do do something, the probability is she’s going to have a massive coronary and we’re going to lose her anyway’. There was no chance that we weren’t going to go through with the surgery.”

Dianne says she and Chris simply looked at one another, turned to the doctor and exclaimed: “Just do it!” Nonetheless, Chris still remembers signing a consent form for the operation as “very tough”.

Surgeons soon explained that they would have to cut Amy open from her neck to her vagina, stem the bleeding and remove her kidney. If she survived to that point, they would attempt open-heart surgery to remove the tumour.

As doctors continued their attempts to stabilize Amy, the grief-stricken Reynolds’ moved to the intensive care unit. By now, members of their equally distraught families had joined them. Together, they would endure a torturous waiting-room vigil for as long as it took to save Amy’s young life.

The Reynolds’ were invited to share brief but precious time with Amy before the operation began. They knew moments shared with her then may have been the last of her life. Chris decided he would see her; and his then 10-year-old son, Sam, wanted to join him.

Dianne watched as her husband and son - from whom nothing had been kept - took a long, lonely walk into the ICU.

She says of that vision: “It really does pull on your heart strings to see your son walk off next to his dad, to what might have been the last time he’d ever see his sister. You imagine a young, innocent kid confronted with other ICU patients, and going down to that isolation room to see his sister all wired up. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”

And Chris remembers his pre-surgery visit as “the hardest thing you could ever imagine”. “I gave her a kiss and took her earrings out,” he says. “I didn’t have a long time in there. My father-in-law came in, and we thought: 'This could be it’.”

The operation was soon under way, as the Reynolds’ and their families sat silently agonizing in the waiting room. Chris and Dianne knew well that other children had died during Amy’s two weeks in the hospital: they had seen nurses regularly disappear from work to attend funerals.

And fixed in their minds were the earlier words of a renal surgeon, who predicted either a “very quick” or “very long” procedure.

By quick, he meant Amy could die the instant she was opened up. A long procedure would naturally signal progress.

“The more time that went past,” says Dianne, “the better we felt.”

And to the Reynolds’ great relief, time kept passing with no word from the operating theatre. But after four long hours, a surgeon appeared with the briefest of reports: “We don’t have her out of the woods yet,” he said, “but things are going well.”

The Reynolds’ were calmly heartened. Says Dianne: “The light got a bit bigger (and) we did say: 'We’ve got to hold on to that bit of hope’.”

Finally, after five hours, another surgeon - with blood-spattered shoes - emerged to report that Amy had survived the surgery! With no more than an eight-year-old’s fighting spirit and will to live, she had beaten the life-sapping tumour. A nurse dubbed her “the miracle kid”.

It was by now 2am the next day, and the Reynolds’ could at last see their daughter in the ICU. Attached to life support, she lay on a bed under heaters, as her body temperature had been reduced for the operation.

She opened her eyes and gazed at her parents, but with her mouth full of tubes couldn’t speak. She simply mouthed some words instead.

Amy’s triumph over the seemingly unbeatable was best not celebrated just then, however.

Within two days, she suffered a setback: doctors found fluid building up around her heart. This fluid would have to be drained through another operation.

“We were really carried along by the momentum of what the medical practitioners were dictating,” says Chris. “We didn’t have time to think on our feet. It just carried us along like a wave.”

In the resilient style for which Amy had become known, however, she survived the setback and, after three more weeks, left the Brookman ward for home. But her future remained uncertain. “The doctors certainly don’t say: 'Yes, you’re going to make it’,” says Chris.

And the Reynolds’ discovered that, among those touched by cancer, an unwritten rule outlawed questions about sufferers’ chances.

Amy won’t be regarded as “in remission” until after five years - without “flare-ups”.

“And then,” says Dianne, “about the 10-year mark, they’ll say: 'She’s cured’, but (that won’t mean) definitely.”

Amy spent her first three months at home in a wheelchair, suffering the side effects of various drugs. One drug - which affects motor skills - caused her continually to fall over, while internal abrasions from the operations gave her great pain. She also suffered an eating disorder, which Dianne says left her as “skin and bone”.

The Reynolds’ then realized they had only come through their “first crisis” and, with Amy, still had to face constant chemotherapy, blood tests, x-rays and ultrasounds.

So now, 12 months later, she still undergoes distressing treatment. Says Dianne: “As Amy goes through her chemo process she absolutely hates it. She has her chemical the night before, can’t sleep and gets agitated.”

Chris and Dianne sometimes have to carry their weakened daughter out of the hospital after treatment. “She just can’t walk,” Dianne laments. “She’s got her skinny little arms wrapped around you, and her 'chuck bowl’ under one arm.

“You carry her out carefully and put her in the car to take her home. It’s a pretty sad sight.”

Amy also faces the possibility of satellite cancers and infertility from radiation, as well as heart damage from chemotherapy.

“Because the radiation affects the ovaries,” says Dianne, “we won’t know until she’s 14 or 15 whether she’s going to have to have hormone replacement.”

In the early hours of recent mornings, Amy has asked her mother: “Will I live? Why did it happen to me?” Says Dianne of her response: “I tell her I can’t (answer). I try to explain what I know, and the best way we’re going to attack it; to give her purpose.

“We’ve never really dealt with the negative aspects. If you really love your kids, you have to be positive for them.”

In the face of many failed relationships - which break under the strain of family grief - Chris and Dianne’s marriage not only survived, but also strengthened. On bad days, when coping seemed impossible, each drew strength from the other. Today, they rejoice in their “still-together” family.

But cherished support also came from their wider family, the police. In those involved with Bluey Day, Camp Quality and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the Reynolds’ saw “goodness” they had once taken for granted.

“Amy’s been to hell and back a couple of times,” says Dianne, “and she’s one of the reasons police do it (provide support).”

The Reynolds’ still succumb to emotion whenever they reflect on the events of last October. Dianne says it’s “a horrible feeling” which “just tears you apart”. But reflection, Chris believes, helps bring their nightmarish experience into perspective.

He concedes that a tear sometimes runs down his cheek when he thinks deeply of how close he came to losing his daughter.

“That’s always in the back of my mind,” he says. “It’s something I’ll have to live with. I don’t think it will ever go away. I think this is always going to affect the way I look at things now.

“I certainly asked: 'Why us?’ But it could affect anybody. We’ve just been unlucky enough that it picked us out.”

Both the Reynolds’ now look at aspects of their profession with much less seriousness. Office politics and promotions consume none of their thoughts. Sitting atop their priority list is their family’s future, into which they now move without certainty or confidence.

Rather, they harbour intense concern for Amy. “She’s got a long way to go yet,” says Dianne, “and we’re 12 months down the track.

“She’s still got to come off chemotherapy and go through various check-ups before she gets to remission. We really don’t know what’s going to happen after that.”

“We’re no different from any other parents: we’d like to see her grow up, get married, have a job and kids, and be at our bedside when we die.”

But the Reynolds’ are not building their future on false hope. “We’ve gotten over the surgery,” says Chris, “but haven’t yet beaten the cancer.”

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