Synopsis

							A LION IN THE HOUSE SYNOPSIS

The first half of A LION IN THE HOUSE, premiering on PBS at 9 PM on June 21 (check local listings), focuses on Tim, Justin and Alex. All three are veterans of the cancer wars when the film meets them. Each has been battling their respective disease for months or years. Each has been under the care of a different doctor-nurse team at Cincinnati Children‟s Hospital Medical Center, one of the top ten children‟s hospitals in the country. But there the similarities end. Tim is a gentle but rebellious teen being raised by his single, working-class mother. In the beginning, he enjoys the special attention his disease brings him, but he resists the discipline of the treatment, throwing his medicine away and cheating on the scale when his weight doesn‟t measure up. Non-compliant, Tim presents special challenges to his doctors as they try to manage his Hodgkin‟s lymphoma. Alex, the daughter of more affluent parents, has enjoyed six good months after three years of intensive treatment. But now her leukemia has relapsed again and her parents are at odds over what kind of further treatment they want her to undergo. Justin, whose divorced parents have had to come together to support him, has had his entire adolescence marred by his continuing illness and relentless treatments. Now he has reached a point where the only treatments for leukemia left open to him are highly experimental. In following the stories of Tim, Alex and Justin, A LION IN THE HOUSE reveals how the treatments used in childhood cancers have come a long way in recent years. A generation ago, childhood cancer was a death sentence. But now survival rates are over 75 percent. Nonetheless, treatments can at times be as debilitating – or even deadly – as the symptoms of the cancers themselves. In the face of a persistently negative prognosis, how do parents and kids find hope for each other? When does optimism become denial? When the child doesn‟t respond, at what point should treatment be stopped? And who should make the decisions – the parents, the doctors, or the children themselves? The final two hours of A LION IN THE HOUSE, airing on PBS on June 22 at 9 PM (check local listings), continues to explore the stories of Tim, Alex and Justin, while introducing the stories of Al and Jen. Both have been recently diagnosed and are just beginning a two-year treatment regimen. Jen is the daughter of professional parents. Her mother, Beth, quits her job as an investigator in the US Attorney General‟s office to care full-time for her daughter as Jen begins chemo to battle her leukemia. No longer a career woman, Beth feels her identity radically changed by her new role. Al is a clever boy who has just received life-saving radiation treatment for a tumor that was at first misdiagnosed as asthma and then discovered to be non-Hodgkin‟s lymphoma. His

mother Regina, a single mom, never leaves his side. She draws on all her emotional resources to keep her mercurial son on track, tacking between humor, sympathy and tough love to sustain him. As they join the other long-term fighters on 5A, they get a glimpse of what awaits them. “When I look at other parents . . . they are going through the same thing I was going through,” says Regina. “They‟re wrung out. It‟s like we had been through a washing machine. They were hurting just as much as me. A whole hallway full of sick kids…I cried every night for all of „em. Not just for mine. I cried for all of „em.” Even as they cope with their children‟s pain and discomfort, the parents must also find a way to finance the enormous costs of treatment. Alex‟s father, Scott, estimates that his insurance company has paid two million dollars so far for his daughter‟s treatment. Meanwhile, Al‟s mother, Regina, has minimal insurance coverage and must navigate a mystifying bureaucracy to get her son‟s medical bills paid. And Marietha, who used to work before Tim got sick, is now on welfare and must spend money she can‟t afford on cab fares to visit Tim in the hospital. Finances aren‟t the only issues that families must contend with. In the intensity of the experience, family relationships evolve in both good ways and bad. During his long illness, Justin‟s mother and his stepmother have forged new bonds as they spend days and weeks together in the hospital. Justin‟s father jokes that they might end up on the Jerry Springer show. But Justin‟s brother Adam and sister Jennifer candidly reveal they have felt emotionally overlooked by their parents for many years, due to their younger brother‟s crisis. Perhaps the most intense moments come when some parents must finally face the reality that their child is not going to pull through. It‟s then up to the doctors to get the families to focus on the unthinkable and to articulate their desires for the children as death approaches. Do they want the doctors to intervene or will they sign a “Do Not Resuscitate” order? Do they want their children to die in the hospital or will they bring them home for their final days? The doctors and nurses, who themselves cannot help being emotionally involved with these special patients, try to guide the parents to make decisions without telling them what to do. And when a child dies, the families suddenly find themselves coping with feelings that are very difficult to assimilate. In addition to the sadness from the loss of their child, they must confront questions of guilt, doubt and regret. A LION IN THE HOUSE continues to chronicle this soul-searching aftermath with some families as they struggle to come to terms with the choices they made and restart the lives they had surrendered to their child‟s care. And how do they move on with their own lives after such an overwhelming experience? Even in the cases of children who respond to treatment, relief can be elusive. Once treatment is complete, families must enter a long period of waiting and uncertainty. Will the cancer come back? It will be years of monitoring before the families can begin to relax. One dad

says, on the last day of his daughter‟s successful treatment, “I don‟t feel as relieved as I thought I would two years ago.” Cancer-free, their trials are not always over. Some children experience cognitive impairment, physical disabilities, and other developmental problems as a result of chemotherapy, radiation treatment and other interventions. Pulled away from school for so long during treatment, childhood cancer survivors also must catch up in the classroom and often experience social difficulties as they try to reconnect with their peers. And in many cases, their parents become overprotective. In general, children and parents alike must contend with the world‟s expectations that their lives are returning to normal, when they no longer even know what “normal” means. Throughout these stories of struggle and resilience, however, there is one constant source of light and hope: the children themselves. Even as they undergo the most brutal forms of intervention, even as they watch the world pass them by through a hospital room window, even as they confront their own mortality decades before most people normally do, they somehow remain children. In many cases, the experience of cancer enables them to grow into stronger and wiser people – just as the experience often teaches their parents to become stronger and wiser adults. And their courage, resilience and good humor are seen here to be an indelible inspiration not only for their families, but for the doctors and nurses who continue to work in pediatric oncology. The stories captured in A LION IN THE HOUSE reflect countless similar stories taking place at all times, all across America. Largely unseen, extraordinarily poignant, they are stories marked by tragedy and pain, transfigured by heroism and heart. “We were constantly reminded of the Isak Dinesen line „You know you are truly alive when you are living among lions,‟” said Bognar.