Sandra, Jessica and I moved from DC, back to Sandra's native Philadelphia. We bought our first house on Shurs Lane in Manayunk in the Fall of 1987. Manayunk was an up and coming area outside of Philadelphia. It is hilly and rises up from the banks of the Schuylkill River. Historically, it was a big textile manufacturing area. It has a lot of brick rowhouses, old stone mill buildings and a canal. In many ways, it reminded me of a rougher version of Georgetown. We had dreams of the area becoming a Georgetown one day. Our single house on a double wide lot was built of Wissahickon Schist in the late 1800's and had six bedrooms on three stories. A great place to raise a family.
I was working as an architect downtown, Sandra was a guidance counselor at The Bridge and Jessica was taken care of at Busy Day Daycare. Their motto, "A busy day is a happy day"! Life was pretty good. Our first house, good jobs, growing family. Spencer was born in June 1989 at Roxborough Hospital. Unlike Jessica's birth, which took 36 hours, Spencer's labor and delivery was quick and easy. We attribute that to the fact that the day before Sandra and I walked the hills of Manayunk, observing the Core States Bike Race. I think that helped move things along.
Chris 32, Sandra 30, Jessica 3, Spencer 2 mos
Spencer was a healthy and happy little boy. One of my co-workers introduced me to the term "Perfect Family". Father, Mother and one child of each sex. Spencer was taken care of during the day by a woman named Cindy, she and her husband Jack took care of 4-5 kids in their house which was about a mile from ours and backed up on the Wissahickon Creek. A couple of months before Spencer's second birthday, he came down with a fever. Cindy still took care of him, it was spring time and some of the other kids were sick too. After three days with a fever we took him to our GP and pediatrician, Harry. He examined him and we mentioned that one of the other kids had just developed chicken pox. He said that Spencer was probably going to get them too and that we should come back once they started to show. At this point, we were keeping Spencer at home and Sandra and I were tag teaming days off to take care of him. We noticed that when we picked him up under his arms, Spencer cried and was uncomfortable. Feeling up into his armpits, we noticed that they were lumpy. Like he had hard peas under the skin in his armpits. When we told him about this, Harry said to bring him in again. Sandra's brother Lauren was living with us at the time and offered to drive me to the Doctor's as Sandra had our only car at work. Upon examination, Harry said that he wasn't sure what it was, but said that we should go over to Children's Hospital immediately to have it checked out.
I kept Sandra informed of what was going on and Lauren drove me over to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). In the emergency room, they looked him over and asked a lot of questions. Particularly about if we had pets, a cat perhaps? No, no pets. Could he have had exposure to pets? Been exposed to someones cat box? I don't think so. Well, they said, we are not sure, but we are going to need to admit him for more testing. If they had to guess, they would say it is either something like "cat scratch fever" or it could be a malignancy. I felt like the doctor had just kicked me in the stomach.
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